Craven Cottage is a football stadium in Fulham, West London, England, which has been the home of Fulham F.C. since 1896. The ground's capacity is 28,107; the record attendance is 49,335, for a game against Millwall in 1938. Next to Bishop's Park on the banks of the River Thames, it was originally a royal hunting lodge and has a history dating back over 300 years.
The stadium has also been used by national teams and was formerly the home ground for rugby league club Fulham RLFC.
Life
Pre-Fulham
The original Cottage was built in 1780, by William Craven, the sixth Baron Craven and was located close to where the Johnny Haynes Stand is now. At the time, the surrounding areas were woods which once made up part of Anne Boleyn's hunting grounds.
The Cottage was lived in by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (who wrote The Last Days of Pompeii) and other somewhat notable (and moneyed) persons until it was destroyed by fire in May 1888. Following the fire, the site was abandoned. Fulham had had 8 previous grounds before settling in at Craven Cottage for good. Therefore, The Cottagers have had 12 grounds overall (including a temporary stay at Loftus Road.) Of particular note, was Ranelagh House, Fulham's palatial home from 1886 to 1888.
Under construction: 1894–1905
When representatives of Fulham first came across the land, in 1894, it was so overgrown that it took two years to be made suitable for football to be played on it. A deal was struck for the owners of the ground to carry out the work, in return for which they would receive a proportion of the gate receipts.
The first football match at which there were any gate receipts was when Fulham played against Minerva in the Middlesex Senior Cup, on 10 October 1896. The ground's first stand was built shortly after. Described as looking like an "orange box", it consisted of four wooden structures each holding some 250 seats, and later was affectionately nicknamed the "rabbit hutch".
In 1904 London County Council became concerned with the level of safety at the ground, and tried to get it closed. A court case followed in January 1905, as a result of which Archibald Leitch, a Scottish architect who had risen to prominence after his building of the Ibrox Stadium, a few years earlier, was hired to work on the stadium. In a scheme costing £15,000 (a record for the time), he built a pavilion (the present-day 'Cottage' itself) and the Stevenage Road Stand, in his characteristic red brick style.
The stand on Stevenage Road celebrated its centenary in the 2005–2006 season and, following the death of Fulham FC's favourite son, former England captain Johnny Haynes, in a car accident in October 2005 the Stevenage Road Stand was renamed the Johnny Haynes Stand after the club sought the opinions of Fulham supporters.
Both the Johnny Haynes Stand and Cottage remain among the finest examples of Archibald Leitch football architecture to remain in existence and both have been designated as Grade II listed buildings.
Establishing itself as a stadium
An England-Wales match was played at the ground in 1907, followed by a rugby league international between England and Australia in 1911.
One of the club's directors, Henry Norris, and his friend William Hall took over Arsenal in the early 1910s, the plan being to merge Fulham with Arsenal to form a "London superclub" at Craven Cottage. This move was largely motivated by Fulham's failure to gain promotion to the top division of English football. There were also plans for Norris to build a larger stadium on the other side of Stevenage Road, but little need after the merger idea failed. During this era, the Cottage was used for choir singing and marching bands along with other performances, and Mass.
In 1933, there were plans to demolish the ground and start again from scratch with a new 80,000 capacity stadium. These plans never materialised, mainly due to the Great Depression.
On 8 October 1938, 49,335 spectators watched Fulham play Millwall. It was the largest attendance ever at Craven Cottage and is unlikely to be bettered because the stadium is now an all-seater with room for no more than 29,700. The ground hosted several football games for the 1948 Summer Olympics and is one of the last extant facilities that did.
Post-World War II
It was not until after Fulham first reached the top division, in 1949, that further improvements were made to the stadium. In 1962 Fulham became the final side in the first division to erect floodlights. An electronic scoreboard was installed on the Riverside Terrace at the same time and flagpoles flying the flags of all of the other first division teams were flown from them. Following the sale of Alan Mullery to Tottenham Hotspur in 1964 (for £72,500) the Hammersmith End had a roof put over it at a cost of approximately £42,500.
Although Fulham were relegated, the development of Craven Cottage continued. The Riverside terracing, infamous for the fact that fans occupying it would turn their heads annually to watch The Boat Race pass, was replaced by what was officially named the 'Eric Miller Stand', Eric Miller being a director of the club at the time. The stand, which cost £334,000 and held 4,200 seats, was opened with a friendly game against Benfica in February 1972, (which included Eusébio). Pelé was also to appear on the ground, with a friendly played against his team Santos F.C. The Miller stand brought the seated capacity up to 11,000 out of a total 40,000. Eric Miller committed suicide five years later after a political and financial scandal, and had unethical dealings with trying to move Fulham away from the Cottage. The stand is now better known as the Riverside Stand.
On Boxing Day 1963, Craven Cottage was the venue of one of the fastest hat-tricks in the history of the English football league, which was completed in less than three minutes, by Graham Leggat. This helped his Fulham team to defeat Ipswich Town 10–1 (a club record). The international record is held by Jimmy O'Connor, an Irish player who notched up his hat trick in 2 minutes 14 seconds in 1967.
Between 1980 and 1984, Fulham rugby league played their home games at the Cottage. They have since evolved into the London Crusaders, the London Broncos and Harlequins Rugby League before reverting to London Broncos ahead of the 2012 season. Craven Cottage held the team's largest ever crowd at any ground with 15,013, at a game against Wakefield Trinity on 15 February 1981.
Modern times
When the Hillsborough disaster occurred in 1989, Fulham were in the second bottom rung of The Football League, but following the Taylor report Fulham's ambitious chairman Jimmy Hill tabled plans in 1996 for an all-seater stadium. These plans never came to fruition, partly due to local residents' pressure groups, and by the time Fulham reached the Premier League, they still had standing areas in the ground, something virtually unheard of at the time. A year remained to do something about this (teams reaching the second tier for the first time are allowed a three-year period to reach the required standards for the top two divisions), but by the time the last league game was played there, against Leicester City on 27 April 2002, no building plans had been made. Two more Intertoto Cup games were played there later that year (against FC Haka of Finland and Egaleo of Greece), and the eventual solution was to decamp to Loftus Road, home of local rivals QPR. During this time, many Fulham fans only went to away games in protest of moving from Craven Cottage. 'Back to the Cottage', later to become the 'Fulham Supporters Trust', was set up as a fans pressure group to encourage the chairman and his advisers that Craven Cottage was the only viable option for Fulham Football Club.
After one and a half seasons at Loftus Road, no work had been carried out on the Cottage. In December 2003, plans were unveiled for £8 million worth of major refurbishment work to bring it in line with Premier League requirements. With planning permission granted, work began in January 2004 in order to meet the deadline of the new season. The work proceeded as scheduled and the club were able to return to their home for the start of the 2004–05 season. Their first game in the new-look 22,000 all-seater stadium was a pre-season friendly against Watford on 10 July 2004.
The current stadium was one of the Premier League's smallest grounds at the time of Fulham's relegation at the end of the 2013–14 season (it was third-smallest, after the KC Stadium and the Liberty Stadium). Much admired for its fine architecture, the stadium has hosted some international games in recent decades, mostly including Australia. This venue is suitable for Australia because most of the country's top players are based in Europe, and West London has a significant community of expatriate Australians. Also, Greece vs. South Korea was hosted on 6 February 2007. In 2011 Brazil played Ghana, in an international friendly, months after hosting the Women's Champions League final.
Craven Cottage often hosts other events such as 5-a-side football tournaments and weddings. Some have Sunday Lunch at the Riverside restaurant or the 'Cottage Cafe' on non-match days. Craven Cottage hosted the Oxbridge Varsity Football match annually between 1991 and 2000 and again in 2003, 2006 (the same day as the 'Boat Race'), 2008, 2009, and 2014 as well as having a Soccer Aid warm-up match in 2006. The half-time entertainment includes the SW6ers (previously called The Cravenettes) which are a group of female cheerleaders. Other events have included brass bands, Travis playing, Arabic dancing, keepie uppie professionals and presentational awards. Most games also feature the 'Fulham flutter', a half-time draw; and a shoot-out competition of some kind, usually involving scoring through a 'hoop' or 'beat the goalie'. On the first home game of the season, there is a carnival where Fulham fans are encouraged to attend in black-and-white colours.
The revived Fulham F.C. Women and reserve teams occasionally play home matches at the Cottage. Other than this, they generally play at the club's training ground at Motspur Park. Craven Cottage is known by several affectionate nicknames from fans, including: The (River) Cottage, The Fortress (or Fortress Fulham), Thameside, The Friendly Confines, SW6, Lord of the Banks, The House of Hope, The Pavilion of Perfection, The 'True' Fulham Palace and The Palatial Home. The Thames at the banks of the Cottage is often referred to as 'Old Father' or The River of Dreams.
The most accessible route to the ground is to walk through Bishops Park from Putney Bridge (the nearest Underground station), often known as 'The Green Mile' by Fulham fans (as it is roughly a mile walk through pleasant greenery). In 2016 The Daily Telegraph ranked the Cottage 9th out of 54 grounds to hold Premier League football.
Plans
On 27 July 2012, Fulham FC were granted permission to redevelop the Riverside Stand, increasing the capacity of Craven Cottage to 30,000 seats. Beforehand various rumours arose including plans to return to ground-sharing with QPR in a new 40,000 seater White City stadium, although these now appear firmly on hold with the construction of the Westfield shopping centre on the proposed site. The board seem to have moved away from their ambition to make Fulham the "Manchester United of the south" as it became clear how expensive such a plan would be. With large spaces of land at a premium in south-west London, Fulham appear to be committed to a gradual increase of the ground's capacity often during the summer between seasons. The capacity of Craven Cottage has been increased during summers for instance in 2008 with a small increase in the capacity of the Hammersmith End. Fulham previously announced in 2007 that they are planning to increase the capacity of Craven Cottage by 4,000 seats, but this is yet to be implemented. There were also proposals for a bridge to span the Thames, for a redeveloped Riverside stand and a museum.