Celtic

Celtic Park was built in 1892 and opened to replace… Celtic Park. When The Celtic Football Club was formed in 1887 they needed somewhere to play their games, so they opened a stadium in the Parkhead Area of the city and called it Celtic Park. There was a dispute over the rent in 1892, however, so they built a new oval-shaped ground to replace it at a disused brickyard around 200 yards from the old ground. Naturally they wanted to keep the name that they given to their old ground and so it was also named Celtic Park. The connection between Celtic and Ireland is well-known, but perhaps what is less well-known is the story of how the first turf installed at the ground was imported from County Donegal. It was laid in the ground by the Irish patriot Michael Davitt, who also planted shamrocks and recited a verse about it. The verse declared that it would ‘take root and flourish’, but it was stolen not long after, so it didn't. The ground has two nicknames, Paradise and Parkhead. The latter comes from the part of Glasgow the stadium is located in, with the former coming from a journalist who said the move from one ground to another was like ‘leaving the graveyard to enter paradise’.