We do love Sincil Bank, whatever it may be called. It’s been the Imps’ home for over a century now, closing in on 132 years.
We’ve had all sorts of disasters there, from break-ins to relegations, collapsing walls to broken goal posts, and in September 1929, there was a big fire that destroyed an entire stand. I hadn’t heard about this until the excellent X account @LCFCImpsHistory tweeted about it, and in the absence of other news, I thought I’d cover it today.
Back in the late 1920s, Sincil Bank was mainly wooden, and the old South Park stand, where the current renovations are taking place, was seemingly prone to fires. On Christmas Day, 1920, the stand caught fire, with 90 yards (about 80 metres) of the stand destroyed. At the time, much of the club administration was conducted under the stand, and with full insurance, it proved to be costly.
10 months later, it was on fire again, this time earlier in the day. Whereas the Christmas fire was put out using water from the Sincil Drain, the latest fire was extinguished using water from allotments that sat at the rear of the ground, where the Athena School is now.
This time, the fire was contained quickly, and while foul play doesn’t seem to have been suspected, a ‘carelessly thrown cigarette end’ was blamed. Two warnings, but it seems neither was heeded.
September, 1929
Just a month before disaster hit Wall Street, Sincil Bank was ablaze again, and this time it put the whole stand into the ground. Discovered later in the evening, it was devastating to the ground’s footprint. I mention Wall Street because the world economy was blasted, and maybe, had the fire happened two months later, we wouldn’t have reacted so quickly.
Fure was first spotted just after 1 am on the morning of September 17th. By the time the fire brigade arrived, the South Park stand was already burning from end to end. Six hoses were turned on the flames, but the wooden structure had gone too far, and attention quickly shifted to saving the dressing rooms and nearby buildings. By the time the fire was out, little remained of the stand beyond the corrugated iron roof and brick foundations.
Harry Parkes, the club manager, had been woken at around 1.15 am at his home in Sausthorpe Street. Looking from his bedroom window, he could see the sky glowing, and he ran down to the ground.
“I ran down Sincil Bank to the south entrance, and on opening the door found South Park stand a mass of flames from end to end,” he told the Echo.
Parkes said his first thought was for the club office, but there was no chance of getting anywhere near it.
“First thoughts were for the office where all the papers, books, etc., were kept, but it was impossible to get anywhere near the centre of the stand, the dry wood providing ready fuel.”
The flames spread to the fencing around the pitch, burned the net at the South Park end, and badly scorched the goalposts. The grass also caught fire, while a recently purchased motor grass-cutter was pulled from a shed in a badly damaged condition. The dressing room building was scorched but saved. Inside the stand, though, the damage was severe, with club records, cricket gear, tools, furniture, old photographs of past Lincoln City teams, and the billiard table all destroyed.
The cause? Another discarded cigarette was blamed, from a game having taken place on the 16th, a fine 3-2 win against the league leaders, Port Vale. Billy Robinson’s hat trick sent the 6,000 crowd home happy, but the smiles turned sour when the cost of the fire was discovered. The damage was estimated at £3000, which, with inflation, would be around £170,000 in 2026. On top of that came the loss of fixtures, fittings and records, some of which could never be replaced, as well as the loss of stand revenue during the coming season.
Such was the loss of records that by the early eighties, the club had forgotten when they were formed, and we celebrated our centenary a year early, in 1983.
The disaster also forced the club to think seriously about the future of Sincil Bank. Chairman E. A. Simpson said no firm decision could be made until the fire assessors had reported, but he suggested the directors were already looking at something far more modern. His preference was for a new stand on the Sincil Bank side of the ground, running the full length of the pitch, capable of holding 3,000 people and including dressing rooms, offices and other accommodation underneath.
Most importantly, Simpson wanted any replacement to remove the risk that had haunted the old wooden South Park stand. He said the fire would act as an incentive to build something non-flammable, adding that, in his view, “nothing short of a concrete structure would suffice”. The projected cost was around £4,000, and the question of buying the ground was put under serious consideration, as any new stand would be both permanent and expensive.
Within two months of the old stand burning down, a new one was in place. A stand running the Sincil bank side of the ground, where our main stand is now, was not considered viable, so the South Park Stand was built. It still stood when I started going, and I even had the pleasure of watching a game from there in 1987.
As with the St Andrews’ Stand in 1986, the replacement South Park Stand was designed with fire risk in mind. Unlike the old wooden structure, the new stand would be built mainly from brick and steel, with officials stating that the danger of another blaze would be “practically nil”. It would include ten tiers of seats, with room for 1,500 people, an uplift of 750, plus an overhanging roof above a terraced paddock at the front. It also had ‘far fewer’ poles obstructing views, which is quite amusing, given how many there were.
Access was also improved, with entrances built at the back of the stand and reached directly from Sincil Bank. Beneath the structure, there was a secretary’s office, board room, players’ recreation room, referees’ room and space for physical training in bad weather. The new stand was to be built on concrete foundations and would stand slightly higher than the old one. The roof would be made from corrugated iron, marking a clear move away from the vulnerable wooden structure that had been destroyed in the fire.
Remarkably, the stand was opened on November 16th, just ten games later.
Given the expense of the new stand, the club also opted to buy the ground from Colonel Swan, the landowner. The club felt committing to a new stand at such a big sum would be a bad move, but by buying the ground, it would serve to protect their investment. The price, £4875, would be close to £300,000 in today’s money, but it helped assure the club’s longevity.
Within a season, City finished Second in the Third Division North, and in 1932, we won our first EFL title, finishing one place higher. Attendances doubled as the likes of West Ham came to the ground, and the shiny new stand was a huge asset.
Also, it didn’t burn down again, which was obviously a good thing.
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