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Muntz Street is the popular name of a former association football stadium situated in the Small Heath district of Birmingham, England, taken from the street on which it stood. During its lifetime the ground was known as Coventry Road; the name "Muntz Street" is a more recent adoption. It was the ground at which the teams of Birmingham City F.C. – under the club's former names of Small Heath Alliance, Small Heath and Birmingham – played their home games for nearly 30 years. It also served as the headquarters of the Small Heath Athletic Club. The Muntz Street ground, then situated on Birmingham's eastern edge and bordered on two sides by farmland, opened in 1877. It was a field with terracing round it which provided standing accommodation for roughly 10,000 spectators. A wooden stand was built and the terracing raised to expand the capacity to around 30,000, but eventually it proved too small for the football club's needs. They built a new stadium nearer the city centre, St Andrew's, which hosted its first game in December 1906. Muntz Street, by then in a heavily built-up area, was demolished in 1907 and the land used for housing. The street of the same name remains. ==Location and facilities== Small Heath Alliance Football Club, founded in 1875, played their first home games on waste ground off Arthur Street, in the Bordesley Green district of Birmingham, very near the site where the club's St Andrew's stadium would be built some thirty years later. In 1876, they made a temporary move to a fenced-off field in Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook, with a capacity estimated at 3,000; because the field was enclosed, admission could be charged. A year later they moved again, to a field in Small Heath, rented for an initial £5 a year from the family of Sam Gessey, a Small Heath player. The field had a capacity of 10,000 spectators, and was situated on the eastern edge of Birmingham's built-up area, just north of the main road to Coventry.〔 It was bordered on two sides by developed streets, Muntz Street on the western side, Wright Street to the south; the other two sides of the enclosure adjoined farmland. When it first opened, the ground had few facilities for either player or spectator. Uncovered terracing surrounded the pitch, and a hut acted as the players' changing room. A small but well-appointed covered wooden stand was built on the Coventry Road side, and over the years the terracing was enlarged to raise the capacity to around 30,000.〔〔Matthews, ''Complete Record'', p. 57.〕 In 1895, the football club bought the lease to the ground, which had 11 years remaining, for a sum of £275. Two years later, they paid £90 to their near neighbours, Aston Villa Football Club, for an old grandstand from Villa's former Wellington Road ground in Perry Barr. The club transported it piece by piece, and re-erected it as a terrace cover behind the goal at the Muntz Street end.〔 No other major improvements were made, nor did the club ever move their administrative offices to the site, instead maintaining premises in Corporation Street, in Birmingham city centre.〔 Muntz Street was readily accessible by public transport. In the early years, horse-drawn buses ran along the Coventry Road, linking Small Heath with the city centre and with other nearby districts. In 1882, the building of a tramline along the Coventry Road to Small Heath Park was authorised, and four years later, the Coventry Road steam tramway route was opened to a terminus near Dora Road, a few yards past the ground. In the early years of the 20th century, this line was converted for use by electric trams. Contemporary reports referred to the ground throughout its lifetime as Coventry Road. Writer and researcher Steve Beauchampé suggests that the Muntz Street name may have been adopted to distinguish it from St Andrew's, which was also built just off the Coventry Road.〔〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Played in Britain: Authors )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Muntz Street」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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