The Nervi Football Stand that Swindon almost got
Arial view of the county ground courtesy of STFC and featured in Swindon in 50 Buildings
Knowing that I have a passing interest in architecture, someone tagged me on Twitter with a link to an article.
The article came from a blog called Calcio England entitled:
‘Florence, Rome, Swindon: How the Grand Master of Italian Stadium Design Nearly Made His Mark in England’. The article had my interest piqued.
Below is an extract from it. Do follow the link above and read the whole thing. It’s fascinating stuff all about the Nervi football stand that Swindon never got.
It turns out that:
‘In June 1963, at the height of his appeal, Nervi received an unexpected piece of correspondence. It came from the municipality of Swindon, England.
Swindon was a mid-sized railway town, located 80 miles west of London in the rural county of Wiltshire. The letter from Mr Laurence Robertson explained that he‘d received authorisation from the local Council. It explained that they wished to engage an “illustrious” architect to produce plans for a new grandstand at the County Ground. The home of Second Division Swindon Town FC.
The project was to be funded by the Council as landowners and repaid over time by the tenant football club.
SBC’s admiration
The letter from Swindon Council described their admiration for Nervi’s Olympic portfolio, making particular reference to the Stadio Flaminio. They wanted to bring a piece of nuovo-Roman chic to Wiltshire.
The precise identity of the visionary on the Swindon Development Committee remains a mystery. The employment of Nervi represented a shift in the town’s traditional architectural style. To that point it had been more Industrial Revolution than Italian Modernism.
This was to be Britain’s first Nervi monument.’
Who knew?
See also this Swindon in 50 More Buildings post about the County Ground Hotel:
See also, also:
