Those We Have Lost: Kingstonian FC at Richmond Road

A Slow Decline

On the 23rd of March 1982, Kingstonian hosted a powerful Wycombe Wanderers team in a League Cup semi-final. The crowd was the biggest Richmond Road had seen in many, many years, yet by this point the club was often too embarrassed to print attendance figures for league games. The ground was dishevelled and ramshackle, a logistical and financial nightmare to maintain. The once-mighty terracing behind one goal was large enough for each supporter to have two rows to themselves, while the covered terrace opposite the main stand was almost entirely superfluous. It was a ground embarrassingly larger than necessary, a shadow of the place that had once been packed with thousands.

This was the Richmond Road of the 1980s, a ground in its death throes. But its history began when Kingstonian took on the mantle of the town's club in 1919. Before the war, a club called Kingston-on-Thames FC had played there, itself an evolution from the myriad of clubs that characterised football's development in the town. After a split in 1907, that club had remained at Richmond Road while a new one, Old Kingstonians, played at the Norbiton Sports Ground. When enmities faded after the war, the unified 'Kingstonian' was formed. The Norbiton site was available for £2,225, but the money was not. Instead, the club negotiated a tenancy for Richmond Road, which had spent the war years as allotments under the ownership of the Dysart Estate.

Their first home game, on the 13th of September 1919, was a 2-2 draw against Wimbledon in the Athenian League.

The Golden Years

Early life at the ground was not simple. The Dysarts, who were clearly not football lovers, leased the site to Leyland Motors FC the following season, leading to much argument before a groundshare was hammered out. Soon, however, Kingstonian had the financial means to purchase the eight-acre site outright for £5,000. A stand costing £1,100 opened in January 1922, extended three years later by a lower stand acquired from Surbiton’s Horse Show Society. This piecemeal main stand, part football and part show jumping, would define the ground's character for decades. Photographs from the late 1920s show a ground instantly recognisable to anyone who stood there in the late 1980s, albeit populated by thousands more men in hats.

The main stand was dwarfed by a massive terrace behind one goal, some forty steps high, which would be remarkably full on big match days. The club’s fortunes soared. Kingstonian won two Athenian League titles in the mid-1920s before being accepted into the Isthmian League in 1929, where they won two more titles in the mid-1930s. The grass banking behind the other goal was just as much a focal point. It offered a unique view of two games at once, as the club’s reserve pitch lay just on the other side of the mound. This gave supporters a second opportunity to shout “bloody rubbish, Kingston, I’m never coming again” for the price of one admission. The inter-war period was the club’s most successful era until their brief, administration-inducing spell in the Conference a decade ago.

The post-war years saw a gradual decline in the club’s fortunes, mirrored by changes to the ground itself. While covered terracing was added opposite the main stand and floodlights arrived in the early 1960s, Richmond Road was too often seen as the solution to mounting financial problems. Despite being an amateur club, thousands of paying customers passed through the turnstiles each season. To pay the bills, the club had to sell off swathes of its land. In 1956, a petrol station named ‘Kingstonian’ was built on part of the Richmond Road frontage, forcing fans to compete with motor vehicles for attention. An attempt to sell the reserve pitch for flat and maisonette development was foiled by Kingston Council in 1957. But by 1974, both the mound and the pitch it overlooked were gone, replaced by a housing development, a new clubhouse, and a car park. The standing room behind that goal was slashed from a couple of thousand to a couple of dozen.

The Long Goodbye

By the 1980s, the remaining space behind that goal was a curious exception to the ground's emptiness. The new clubhouse wall was so close to the pitch that wayward shots hammered dangerously into the brickwork, rebounding at unpredictable angles. The distance from the wall to the pitch was so small that the terrace offered little more than a snug fit for larger fans. A strategically placed but permanently locked gate meant that a trip to the clubhouse for a half-time pint involved a full lap of the ground. It was an inconvenience few would miss.

The end came slowly and messily. In February 1984, with the club valued at over £1 million, members voted to sell the rest of the ground amid forecasts that Kingstonian would not otherwise survive the decade. Yet the club did not leave until January 1988. By then, rising property values had consumed the six-figure profits the sale was supposed to generate. The move to a new home was just as disjointed. Kingsmeadow did not open until August 1989, forcing the club into a groundshare with neighbours Hampton. Two 'home' games were even played in Carshalton, almost far enough away to require developing a new accent. The new stadium, though impressive, was one of the identikit new builds of the era, almost identical to Aylesbury’s ground which had been completed shortly beforehand.

Something was lost. For all its faults, Richmond Road was so old yet so recognisable from the grainy images of the 1920s. It was easy to sense the excitement of former days, even if it was hard to visualise the thousands once crammed inside. Today, Wimbledon are preparing to bring league football to Kingsmeadow, a ground built on the old Norbiton Sports Ground where Old Kingstonians once played before the great war.