Those We Have Lost: Southbury Road, Enfield

A Proper Football Ground

Towering floodlights peered over the trees that bordered the playing fields. The back of the main stand, approached from Bryn-yr-Mawr Road, seemed massive to a child’s eyes, and the view from inside was high enough to feel like watching Match of the Day. For a non-league ground, Southbury Road felt proper, a scaled-down version of a Football League home. It was the first stadium many youngsters ever experienced, and its scale left a lasting impression.

Its imperfections gave it character. Liberal amounts of navy blue and white paint covered everything, even the bases of the goalposts for a time. A white picket fence surrounded the pitch, at least until Lincoln City supporters used it as an impromptu weapon after a 1-0 FA Trophy quarter-final defeat in 1988. A collection of huts served as the Supporters Club, the shop, and the tea bar. But it was far from perfect. The terracing behind the goals was too shallow, offering a poor view for anyone under six feet tall when a crowd gathered. The long terrace opposite the main stand was just compressed earth until it was finally concreted in the late 1980s. As a big, open ground, it could sometimes feel difficult to generate a loud atmosphere.

There were other idiosyncrasies remembered fondly: the training goals stacked in one corner, a slowly decaying white hut behind a terrace, and the boarded-up turnstiles in a far corner, a relic of bigger days. In the corner of the ground sat the Starlight Rooms, a club-cum-cabaret venue that once hosted Tom Jones, Bob Monkhouse and Paul Daniels. By the mid-1980s, its glamour had faded, the air thick with the smell of stale Watneys and Players Number Six cigarettes. It was the sale of this venue by chairman Tom Unwin to Tony Lazarou that would eventually trigger the crisis that engulfed the club.

The Glory Days

On a bitter Tuesday night in December 1981, Enfield faced Wimbledon in the FA Cup Second Round. From the main stand, a low rumble would start whenever the home side attacked, the sound of regulars stamping their feet on the wooden floorboards. Fewer than 3,000 people were there, but on a pitch hewn from rock, Enfield skidded to an improbable 4-1 victory against a team that would lift the FA Cup just seven years later.

This was Enfield’s golden era. They were FA Trophy winners in 1982 and 1988, and Football Conference champions in 1983 and 1986. The excitement was constant, whether it was the first warm August evening of the season against Trowbridge Town or the chronic worry that a winter match would be called off, condemning a fan to an afternoon of shopping. The thrill came from seeing queues at the turnstiles for an FA Cup tie or scanning newspapers for results during a title run-in. Every couple of years, it seemed, there was a trophy presentation. For a small corner of London, it felt like being remembered for something.

A Slow Decline

The good times did not last. When automatic promotion to the Football League was introduced in 1988, other clubs upped their game, turning professional or paying higher wages. Enfield were soon eclipsed by local rivals Barnet, backed by their ticket-tout chairman Stan Flashman, and were relegated to the Isthmian League in 1990. They won that league in 1995, but the Football Conference, unsatisfied with the club’s finances, denied them promotion.

The decline was slow and painful. When rugby union turned professional, Saracens moved to Southbury Road in 1996. The entire Playing Field side of the ground was demolished to erect a temporary seated stand. But Saracens left for Vicarage Road after just one season. The scaffolding came down, leaving Enfield with a ground that was barely up to scratch and a sudden need to find a new home.

They left Southbury Road in 1999. The club spent two years playing at St Albans, Ware, and Boreham Wood. In 2001, supporters gave up on chairman Tony Lazarou’s promises of a return to the borough and formed their own club, Enfield Town. The original Enfield FC folded in the summer of 2007, only to be reformed as Enfield (1893) in the Essex Senior League. The division has left football in the borough considerably weaker.

Enfield Town have been playing at Brimsdown Rovers’ Goldsdown Road since their foundation, and crowds have stagnated around the 200 mark. A home of their own is just around the corner, barely half a mile from the old Southbury Road site. They plan to move into the QE2 Athletics Stadium this September.