Roots Hall

Roots Hall is the home ground of the English Football League One club Southend United. With a capacity of 12,392 Roots Hall is the largest football stadium in Essex, and is the current venue for the final of the Essex Senior Cup. Southend United are due to move out of Roots Hall into a new 22,000 seat stadium at Fossetts Farm, though work has yet to begin on the new stadium.

History

Pre-Roots Hall

The site now occupied by Roots Hall is where Southend United had originally played their home games on their formation in 1906. Upon the outbreak of the First World War the area was designated for storage and Southend were forced out. After the war the club elected to move to a new ground at the Kursaal and Roots Hall first became a quarry for sand then a tipping site.

Relocation

By the early 1950s Southend had moved once more to Southend Stadium off Sutton Road. The club did not own the ground and the dog track which encircled the pitch made it unsuitable for use as a football stadium. In 1952 the wasteland at the old Roots Hall site was purchased to build a new stadium for the club. Work on the ground could not begin immediately owing to the large quantities of rubbish which had been dumped on the site in the club's absence, which took nearly a year to clear. On 20 August 1955 Roots Hall hosted its first match, against Norwich City. The ground was declared open by the Secretary of the Football Association, Sir Stanley Rous. The ground remained the youngest in the Football League until the opening of Scunthorpe United's Glanford Park in 1988.