page_title: Margate F.C.
section_title: Stadium
hierarchical_section_title: Margate F.C. / Stadium
caption_attribution_description: English: Hartsdown Park, home of Margate F.C. I took the photo
context_page_description: Margate Football Club, originally called Margate Town, is an English football team based in the seaside resort of Margate, Kent. They currently play in the Isthmian League Premier Division. The club was known for a number of years during the 1980s as Thanet United.
  The club was founded in 1896 and joined the Southern Football League in 1933. After a spell in the Kent League after World War II the team returned to the Southern League in 1959 and remained there until 2001 when they gained promotion to the Football Conference, the highest level of English non-league football. Their stay at this level saw the team forced to groundshare with other clubs due to drawn-out and problematic redevelopment work at their Hartsdown Park stadium, and during the three years spent away from their own ground they were expelled from the Conference National and subsequently relegated to the Isthmian League.
  The team, nicknamed "The Gate", have to date reached the third round proper of England's premier cup competition, the FA Cup, on two occasions. On the second of these occasions they played Tottenham Hotspur, a First Division team and the reigning UEFA Cup holders.
context_section_description: The stadium in Hartsdown Park has been Margate's home since 1929, the same year the park itself opened to the public. Little development of the stadium took place until 2002, when the club launched an ambitious scheme to completely redevelop the site. The club moved out and the old stadium, which was constructed mainly from timber and corrugated iron, was demolished in early 2003, but the local council disputed the plans submitted. Although planned to be completed by August 2003, the redevelopment dragged on for three years, mired in issues regarding planning permission for the commercial facilities the club wanted to build in addition to the stadium itself. The team spent three years ground-sharing with other Kent clubs, but club officials' failure to confirm a return date to Hartsdown led to Margate's expulsion from the Conference National in 2004. In 2005 the club was finally able to return to the ground, albeit with pre-fabricated stands and temporary buildings in place. In 2014, the club applied to the local council for permission to erect six new temporary stands.
  The club's ultimate plan involves a stadium with a capacity of 5,000 forming part of a complex incorporating a hotel, fitness centre, conference centre, all-weather pitch and ten 5-a-side pitches. Although it was announced that work on the 5-a-side pitch complex was to begin in May 2007, ground was not in fact broken for a further four months.
caption: Hartsdown Park photographed in 2014.
exif: {"Image Software": "Picasa", "Image DateTime": "2014:11:29 19:26:12", "Image Artist": "Picasa", "Image ExifOffset": "96", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "364", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4942", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2014:11:29 19:25:48", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "516", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "342", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "Interoperability RelatedImageWidth": "640", "Interoperability RelatedImageLength": "480", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "228", "EXIF ImageUniqueID": "74f2877a1b9ff8319eba79739735f6e6"}