Southend United

Southend United have played at five different grounds during their history, with two of them taking the name Roots Hall. When the club was formed they played their games on a piece of ground called Roots Hall, but they had to leave this when the First World War broke out and the army wanted to use the space for storage. They moved to a new ground in the middle of The Kursaal Amusement Park, but this was only ever likely to be a temporary home. The original space had since become a quarry for sand and a tipping site, so when the club acquired the rights to create a purpose-built stadium on it, it was clearly going to take some effort to get it up to scratch. In the end it actually took ten years to build the new Roots Hall on the site of the old one. In fact, when the club’s inaugural season began there the construction of the stadium was incomplete. The authorities couldn’t complain, however, as the ground was officially opened by Sir Stanley Rous - the Secretary of the Football Association. The rush-job on getting the stadium finished meant that it wasn’t up to scratch, with the drainage on the pitch being such an issue during the 1955-1956 season that it had to be completely re-laid in the off-season.