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| Late in 1885, Bob McClurg, an employee in the Linfield mill of the Ulster Spinning Company, led a deputation to ask directors permission to form a football team and to use the ground at the back of the mill called "The Meadow". This was granted and the company even offered the facilities of the dining hall where they had first discussed the prospects of setting up the club. So in March 1886, the club, known as Linfield Athletic, was officially founded. |
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| Because of limited space and the need to accommodate more spectators, a ground at Ulsterville, situated where today the first terrace of houses stand at the end of Ulsterville Avenue on the Lisburn Road, was leased in 1889, but due to legal snags, the tenancy lasted a mere four years. There had been many wonderful victories at "The Meadow", but during the four years at Ulsterville even greater glory was achieved. |
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For two years Linfield were homeless, playing all their games at the home of their opponents, before taking on the lease of a ground at Myrtlefield, Balmoral. |
Perturbed at the constant change of a ground since the team's formation, Arthur McDermott set about trying to find a permanent home for his football team. In 1904 after learning on the grapevine that a large piece of the Bog Meadows was scheduled to come on the market, he conducted the comittee on an inspection tour, meeting the landowner who agreed to sell immediately. On October 1, 1904 a legal agreement was completed, giving Linfield the permanent home they needed. It took a year to prepare the ground before the first match took place in September 1905, with Linfield defeating Glentoran 1-0. A year later the area was fenced and in 1907 a seated grandstand was constructed on the South side. Progress was rapid:
1909 - unreserved grandstand erected
1911 - portion of shelter added to South Stand
1913 - extension to unreserved stand
1920/23 - concrete boundary fence erected
1926 - Balmoral Stand added onto South Stand
1930 - new £10,000 grandstand and changing rooms |
| Work was constantly carried out on Windsor Park, and by 1935 it had a capacity of 60,000. 1956 saw the erection of floodlights and still the work continued, amongst it, the installation of 600 seats in the Railway Stand in 1966. Then in 1982, after Linfield had defeated Glentoran 1-0 in a County Antrim Shield tie, the unreserved stand on the north side of the ground, which housed the Glentoran fans, went up in flames and was destroyed. However within 36 months a new £2 million, 2 tier stand had been constructed on the site. More work was carried out to the South Stand, before, in 1996, to comply with The Taylor Report, the Spion Kop was closed for the final time, to be replaced by a new 4,000 seater stand. |
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| Windsor Park now has a seated capacity of around 15,000, a far cry from the mid thirties and the 60,000 attendances, but the stadium is still the biggest and best in the Irish league, and of course is the home of the Northern Ireland international team. |
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