page_title: Hampden Park
section_title: Three Hampdens
hierarchical_section_title: Hampden Park / History / Three Hampdens
context_page_description: Hampden Park is a football stadium in the Mount Florida area of Glasgow, Scotland. The 51,866-capacity venue serves as the national stadium of football in Scotland. It is the normal home venue of the Scotland national football team and Scottish League Two club Queen's Park. Hampden regularly hosts the latter stages of the Scottish Cup and Scottish League Cup competitions and has also been used for music concerts and other sporting events, such as when it was reconfigured as an athletics stadium for the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
  There were two 19th-century stadia called Hampden Park, built on different sites. A stadium on the present site was first opened on 31 October 1903. Hampden was the biggest stadium in the world when it was opened, with a capacity in excess of 100,000. This was increased further between 1927 and 1937, reaching a peak of 150,000. The record attendance of 149,415, for a Scotland v England match in 1937, is the European record for an international football match. Tighter safety regulations meant that the capacity was reduced to 81,000 in 1977. The stadium has been fully renovated since then, with the most recent work being completed in 1999.
context_section_description: Queen's Park, the oldest club in Scottish football, have played at a venue called Hampden Park since October 1873. The first Hampden Park was overlooked by a nearby terrace named after Englishman John Hampden, who fought for the roundheads in the English Civil War. Queen's Park played at the first Hampden Park for 10 years beginning with a Scottish Cup tie on 25 October 1873. The ground hosted the first Scottish Cup Final, in 1874, and a Scotland v England match in 1878.
  The club moved to the second Hampden Park, 150 yards from the original, because the Cathcart District Railway planned a new line through the site of the ground's western terrace. A lawn bowling club at the junction of Queen's Drive and Cathcart Road marks the site of the first Hampden. The second Hampden Park opened in October 1884. It became a regular home to the Scottish Cup Final, but Celtic Park shared some of the big matches including the Scotland v England fixture in 1894.
  In the late 1890s, Queen's Park requested more land for development of the second Hampden Park. This was refused by the landlords, which led to the club seeking a new site. Henry Erskine Gordon agreed to sell 12 acres of land off Somerville Drive to Queen's Park in November 1899. James Miller designed twin grandstands along the south side of the ground with a pavilion wedged in between. The natural slopes were shaped to form banks of terracing, designed by Archibald Leitch. Construction of the new ground took over three years to complete; during construction, a disaster occurred at Ibrox in which part of the wooden terraces collapsed. In response, the terraces at Hampden were firmly set in the earthwork and innovative techniques were used to control spectators.
  Third Lanark A.C. took over the second Hampden Park in 1903 and renamed it Cathkin Park. The club rebuilt the ground from scratch due to a failure to agree a fee for the whole stadium. Third Lanark went out of business in 1967 and Cathkin Park is now a public park with much of the original terracing still evident.
  Hampden Park was the biggest stadium in the world from its opening in 1903 until it was surpassed by the Maracanã in 1950. Along with Celtic Park and Ibrox, the city of Glasgow possessed the three largest football stadia in the world at the time Hampden opened. In the stadium's first match, on 31 October 1903, Queen's Park defeated Celtic 1–0 in the Scottish league. The first Scottish Cup Final played at the ground was an Old Firm match in 1904, attracting a record Scottish crowd of 64,672. The first Scotland v England match at the ground was played in April 1906 with 102,741 people in attendance, which established Hampden as the primary home of the Scotland team.
caption: The remains of Cathkin Park, which was the site of the second Hampden Park.
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