Newspaper Article

BECAUSE WE'RE WORTH IT: A Victorian baths was saved by BBC viewers last week, which proves that the British public, at least, value their sporting heritage. Time for the Government to follow suit

Inglis, Simon

2003

Overview

BARELY PROTECTED, SEEMINGLY friendless in high places, Britain's unrivalled sporting heritage diminishes, bit by bit, with every year that passes. Houses are to replace Warrington's rugby-league ground Wilderspool, while in Eccles, Greater Manchester, pool ousts billiards from yet another Edwardian pub. Keyrings 'made from materials that once made up Wembley Stadium' sell for a fiver, courtesy of a company called Football Heaven. A developer in Clifton, Bristol, plans to tear down an open-air Victorian swimming pool that may well be the last of its ilk. Barely three miles from where work continues on the conversion of the National Hockey Stadium into a temporary home for First Division migrants Wimbledon FC - themselves, many would argue, an affront to football's own heritage - Wolverton Park is an enchanting place; a sunken grass bowl, hemmed in between the intercity line and a long, brick railway shed where, until recently, the royal train was quartered. (Wolverton itself was the Milton Keynes of the nineteenth century, founded in 1838 on the halfway point between London and Birmingham on both the railway and the Grand Union canal.) Other than a few modest additions, Wolverton Park has barely altered since and has certainly never been suitable for professional sport. (The last large crowd, of about 4,000, was for a local football final in 1987.) That, however, is part of its charm. Along with Bournville in Birmingham and Port Sunlight in the Wirral, Wolverton is one of Britain's finest surviving examples of a company sports ground, from an era when the health and welfare of employees was deemed to be a natural part of a company's moral obligations (and in the era of privatised railways, at that).

• Publisher: Guardian News & Media Limited