By theimps.tk
January 11 2009

Chesterfield's Saltergate was a very old school ground, the vast majority of which hasn't been changed for quite some time. It was a ground set right in the heart of the town, therefore offering some decent things to do before the game. Chesterfield moved out of the stadium in 2010.  

With Lincoln's trip to Carlisle being called off in 2006, myself and Ian Calvert decided to go to a random game and after our first choice was postponed, we decided to make the lovely trip to Saltergate, a ground that I had previously never really wanted to visit. The oddest thing about Chesterfield, before you even get near the ground is the crooked spire, you have to see this to truly understand how odd it is.

 Other than that finding the ground was going to prove to be a bit difficult. The stadium was set in amongst a lot of houses and if it hadn't been for the floodlights then you'd never see it. Parking did seem at a bit of a premium at the time, but in future visits I realised that there was quite a large car park nearby.

During my final visit in 2010, a few of us decided to take a look around the town centre as we had arrived stupidly early for the game. It reminded me a lot of Lincoln, one main street with a lot of other, small streets off of it. Luckily this was only a 10 or so minute walk from the stadium.

Anyway, once we finally got to the ground (after finally managing to park). We tried to go to the club shop but after asking 2 people, who had told us it was in different locations, we decided just to try and find it ourselves and after we did, we wish we hadn't really bothered. The shop itself was fairly large, however, the area where people could walk around was the size of most people's dining tables, it was tiny and by the looks of it, there's nothing really worth buying.

So, into the ground. We decided to go into the home terracing known as "The Spion Kop". After climbing a large set of stairs, we noticed that there was a large area behind the terracing where you could just do whatever in before actually going to watch the match. The only problem with this stand was that several pillars get in your way if you stand in certain places, however, you do get an excellent view of the action if the post isn't in your way.

To the left of us was the Compton Street Stand, either side of this you could still see where the terrace used to be. The main section of this stand was an extremely small seated section which although ran the length of the pitch and couldn't have been more than 7 or 8 rows high. The away stand was at the opposite end and it had no roof and therefore, no pillars in the way, however, no noise could be made from this end at all and even though there were around 250 Yeovil fans in that end, you couldn't hear them at when they were celebrating any of their 3 goals.

The final stand to our right was an incredibly old stand with wooden seats (wasn't that banned now???). I would later sit in this stand during our visit in 2010 and although it offered a decent enough view of the action, it's safe to say this wasn't a comfortable stand. The seats were wooden with no back and the actual "allocated seating" was white paint every foot and a half, several large fans wouldn't stand a chance.

The atmosphere at Saltergate is almost non-existent with only the occasional "Come on Spirites" sounding from the Spion Kop. This was disappointing because an end with around 1,500 people in it should at least have a decent level of atmosphere coming out of it.

The one thing I really liked about Saltergate was that it felt like an old-school football ground and unlike several other stadiums in the country, it automatically gave off the feeling that football should be played here.

Chesterfield moved out of the stadium in time for the 2010/2011 season into the B2Net Stadium, but I would have recommended the stadium for a random visit had it been still around.

Chesterfield's Saltergate Stadium

Discussion started by theimps.tk (IP Logged), 11/01/2009 00:15

theimps.tk
11/01/2009 00:15

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Kate Jackson
11/01/2009 00:16

Look who just happens to be on the programme cover.

Good Luck, Mr Gorsky

http://twitter.com/#!/katejackson84
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