What happened to ghost grounds: How once-great stadiums have been transformed

It sometimes seems that those who view our football from beyond these shores have the greatest appreciation of the cathedrals, once central to the game’s history, which have been bulldozed now.

When a leading documentary photographer, Stuart Roy Clarke, wanted to create a book he called ‘The Homes of Football’, capturing his 1990s journey around our domestic game as it stood on the cusp of a modernisation, the only publisher willing to commission it was German – ‘Spielmacher’. The finished product, published a few years ago, is beautiful, though the text is in German, with English translation tucked away at the back.

Some of those great stadiums – packed with fans when Clarke depicted them – remain as iconic as ever to those who remember them, a point proved by the response to Mail Sport journalist Ian Ladyman’s journey back to the centre of the old Maine Road centre circle, in south Manchester, last year.

The plaque laid at that spot is classy, though it is the merest fragment, nonetheless. What similar remnants might still exist at these places, which we might call ‘ghost grounds?’

Mail Sport’s chief sports photographer Andy Hooper has led our own quest to find out, selecting stadiums where the game’s greatest occasions played out, some of which are now not even on the map. It was the sheer challenge of locating some of these places which surprised Andy. There are no brown tourism signs, no blue plaques, yet still evidence of an abiding fascination for them. Where Andy travelled, I followed, finding that the ghosts of ages past walk tall in some, though not all, of these places.

The spirit of West Ham United, for example, is alive and well on Green Street, east London, though you need to look twice to be sure. On the