Archibald Leitch

[Beer Belly Loyal]

A great honourable Glasgow man born and bred.

His early work was on designing tea factories in Deltota in the former Kandyan Kingdom of Ceylon, as well as factories in his home city and in Lanarkshire with the sole surviving example of which being the category A listed Sentinel Works at Jessie Street, Polmadie, just south of Glasgow city centre.

He moved into stadium design when he was commissioned to build Ibrox Park, the new home ground of his boyhood heroes Rangers, in 1899.
The Ibrox Main Stand building you see today was opened on January 1st 1929 for a league match against city rivals Celtic, a match Rangers won by 3-0.
Leitch became Britain's foremost football architect. In total he was commissioned to design part or all of more than 20 stadiums in the UK and Ireland between 1899 and 1939.

Including the likes of:

Villa Park, Birmingham
Anfield, Liverpool
Old Trafford, Greater Manchester
Arsenal Stadium, Highbury, London
Ayresome Park, Middlesbrough
Goodison Park, Liverpool
Bramall Lane, Sheffield
Cardiff Arms Park, Cardiff
Tynecastle Park, Edinburgh
Dens Park, Dundee
Celtic Park, Glasgow...

...er, no wait!

Some chancer by the name of Simon Inglis who apparently is from Birmingham authored a book about Leitch - and says this;

"contrary to received wisdom, he had no hand in Celtic Park. Archie, it turns out, was a Rangers man and freemason through and through, a typical late Victorian Scottish Protestant professional".

http://www.wsc.co.uk/the-archive/906-Grounds/1644-underneath-the-archie
​

Hmm...why would something that has been well documented for decades and accepted as fact suddenly become in Inglis words - 'received wisdom'?
Is it just another message intended to paint Glasgow Protestants in a bad light and those connected with Rangers FC in particular - bigoted men who are evil beyond belief and should be frowned upon?
I have no idea where this Simon Inglis c*nt has got this information from, but at a guess I'd say it's shit-stirring and another attempt at re-writing history, a growing practise in 21st Century Scotland against Protestants which is intended to be spread far and wide, better to be put down by pen first to make it become factual by word of mouth after.

I'd imagine the great man Archibald Keir "Archie" Leitch will be turning in his grave.

 

[colin stein 9]

List of Archibald Leitch designed football grounds here including CP -

https://m.ranker.com/list/archibald-leitch-buildings-and-structures/reference

 

[Talktalk]

The air brushing of history at work again, give it 100 years and they will be writing that it was them who saved Rangers by giving secret loans.

 

[JorgAlbertz]

http://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=205844

1929, new 5000 seat South Stand at Celtic Park. I am going to hazard a guess it is a different structure than the current main stand monstrosity.

 

[JorgAlbertz]

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=MKBefdszfwMC&pg=PT26&lpg=PT26&dq=Archibald+leitch+Celtic+Park

Also in a Celtic history book.

 

[JorgAlbertz]

https://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/meet-archibald-leitch-man-who-invented-football-stadium

Despicable tone in this article. He's apparently Leitch's biographer and a Villa fan of 54 years.


In his native Scotland Leitch worked at Rangers, Hearts, Dundee, Kilmarnock, Hamilton and at Hampden Park.

Other commissions included Windsor Park in Belfast, Dalymount Park in Dublin, plus a stand at Twickenham and a complete greyhound and speedway stadium at West Ham, where in the early 1930s there was a doomed attempt to establish a Football League club (Thames AFC, not to be confused with the turn-of-the-century Thames Ironworks who became West Ham United).

No other firm of architects or engineers, before or since, has clocked up such a client base in British sport.

How did he manage it? Firstly, as a factory architect Leitch was used to building functional structures quickly and cheaply – just what budget-conscious football clubs wanted. Secondly, Leitch himself was, as all good architects need to be, a great salesmen, and one who clearly loved football. (That he was also an active freemason undoubtedly helped at certain clubs.)

But thirdly, and most tellingly, until the late 20th century there were very few architects who bothered with football. Leitch cornered the market. He was a safe pair of hands.

And yet how differently it might have worked out.

Back at the turn of the century, newly set up on his own account as a ‘consulting engineer and factory architect’ in his native Glasgow, and already with several factory designs under his belt, Leitch’s first major football commission was to design a new stadium for Rangers, the club he supported.

Designing factories was one thing: factories had been around for decades. Building a football ground for 80,000 spectators in the early 1900s was quite another challenge. There were few precedents. Most football grounds of the period just sort of grew, stand by stand, terrace by terrace. At best, a would-be stand designer could pick up a few design tips from theatres and music halls. They might also learn a thing or two from the Colosseum and other classical ruins.

Otherwise, it was a case of swotting up on the geometrical basics (sightlines and so on), addressing the engineering requirements (loadings, stresses, materials etc), and hoping that things worked out.

In Leitch’s case they did not work out.

On the first occasion his newly completed Ibrox Park was tested by a capacity crowd – for Scotland’s match against the Auld Enemy on 5 April 1902 – a short section of timber terracing behind one of the goals gave way, sending 25 fans to their deaths.

Archie witnessed the disaster at first hand. What should have been the proudest day of his professional life turned into an designer’s worst nightmare. A system failure… and a tragedy.

It was said of the engineer Sir Thomas Bouch that he died ‘a broken man’ after the collapse of his recently completed Tay Bridge in Dundee in 1879. In 1902 Archie faced similar angst. Even though he escaped official censure after an uncomfortable public enquiry, it seemed unlikely he’d work in football again, especially after Rangers hired another consulting engineer to undertake a rethink.

But Leitch was no quitter. If nothing else he had shown while giving evidence that he was a man of confidence, and even wit. (Then, as now, you couldn’t get on in the boardrooms of football clubs without enjoying a drink or a joke.) So first he persuaded Rangers to take him back on.

Then he did what any decent designer would do in the circumstances. He went back to the drawing board.