Bury were dead and buried after being driven into extinction... but Gigg Lane has been brought back to life and will see football return for the first time in four years.
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Gigg Lane is back on the football map as Bury return to their spiritual homeBut nowhere is the anticipation quite the same as in Bury — at the Staff of Life pub on the Manchester Road, in the queues at Walsh’s butchers in the town’s famous market and amid the back-to-backs on Gigg Lane.
For four years, those places and their town have not been same on Saturday afternoons, as Bury FC’s famous ground — home to the club since their formation in 1885 — fell silent, cut from the fabric of the British football landscape by a rogue owner, Steve Dale, who milked the club and drove it into extinction.
The ground seemed gone for good on the foul north Manchester August day in 2019 when removal vans carted off what was sellable, after the EFL had tired of Dale’s empty promises to find a buyer and expelled the club from League One. Scribbled messages were taped to the stadium railings. ‘No price on memories’, read one.
But Gigg Lane is back on the football map on Saturday as Bury FC return to their spiritual home for the start of a new season. The opposition — Glossop North End in the Premier Division of the North West Counties League — might not be what they had become accustomed to, but there will be at least 2,000 in the place, attesting to what the unquenchable spirit of football communities can achieve.
i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/07/28/21/73734767-12349965-image-a-46_1690577390293.jpgThe ground seemed gone for good on the foul north Manchester August day in 2019, when Bury were expelled from the Football LeagueThere have been fierce differences of opinion over which direction to take since the club went bust. One fan-owned group formed Bury AFC, which has competed in the North West Counties League at Radcliffe, a town three miles down the road. Another wanted to hold on to the old club and ground and secured a £1million Government Levelling Up grant to buy Gigg Lane. But only through a merger with the first group was that cash accessible.
Since the two camps combined, there has been a monumental effort to restore one of Britain’s most venerable old stadiums from a state of desperate dereliction. Fans found a weed-infested pitch little better than a cow field. The corridors of the club were a sea of broken glass.
Doors on to the concourse were smashed and stadium seats wrecked. Dale had not even bothered to secure the place. The interior now surpasses anything Bury knew in their dying days of league football. An old Gigg Lane street name sign, unearthed in a skip at the end of the street, is the most eye-catching of artefacts and framed images of ex-greats — Colin Todd and Terry McDermott among others — hang on the walls of the main corridor.
That cowfield has been dug up and seeded to create a surface befitting a pitch which the creators of the old Wembley Stadium are said to have imitated when they laid their own.
Life was never easy at this club on this northern fringe of Manchester. Gates were so low in the early 1900s that a move to Rochdale was mooted. A ‘smoking cafe’ provided a vital source of income at that time.
‘It’s not been the same here without Gigg Lane,’ says Margaret Jones, shopping at the market, as supporters paint gates and scrub seats down at the ground. ‘It’s a short walk out there, you see. It’s not your fancy “out of town” but it’s part of our place.’
Her own surroundings do not exude wealth. The boarded-up units in Bury’s town centre tell of a place which seen better days. The club is something around which the place can coalesce.
i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/07/28/21/73734773-12349965-image-a-47_1690577390295.jpgRemoval vans carted off what was sellable after the EFL tired of Steve Dale’s empty promises to find a buyerEveryone wants to contribute, it seems. A local IT firm has helped with digital systems for Gigg Lane. Local builders have created a bar facility in their spare time. Dozens of local firms — hair salons, fire safety specialists, retailers of blinds — have taken up pitch perimeter ads. ‘Companies are coming forward, rather than us going out to them,’ says Adam Clark, a member of the club’s media team.
Volunteers include David Cheshire, a former site manager for the local Manchester council, bringing his carpentry skills to bear to strip out the directors’ box seats and re-purpose them for the home dug-out. (The away bench gets cheaper seats.)
‘I’ve repaired countless doors that have been kicked in and just to see it back as it is now — brilliant,’ Cheshire says, during a break from his work. ‘It’s what this town needs,’ adds his wife Anna, also joining the clean-up.
An American-based benefactor was behind the purchase of the stadium. Peter Alexander, who was raised in east Manchester, works for a Californian cyber security firm and has ploughed in £450,000 from a family inheritance.
i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2023/07/28/21/73734765-12349965-image-a-48_1690577390316.jpgThere have been differences of opinion over which direction to take since the club went bustHad he and other members of a ‘Bury FC Benefactors’ company raised £1million, to match the Government grant, they would have taken a minority ownership of the club itself. But the group came £300,000 short of that figure, so the club is wholly owned by fans. Alexander and other investors co-own the ground, where the Cemetery End stands has been named after Alexander’s grandfather, Arthur Ashworth — whom he says first took him to Gigg Lane.
Around 1,400 season tickets have been sold at a touch over £200 each for a season which will bring Skelmersdale United, FC Isle of Man, Ramsbottom United and many more to the old ground and it’s not hard to imagine gates getting close to 3,000 if the club can compete for promotion. No one will be earning or costing millions here but here’s a purity to it all that makes you hope that Bury perhaps won’t become too successful, bringing another supposedly rich investor arrives with big promises and dark intentions.
‘People can have short memories and there is always that demand to spend money without thought of consequences.’ says Phil Young, a member of Bury’s interim board. ‘But I don’t for the life of me think there would be the same level of excitement if someone started pumping money in.
‘We’ve learned a lot through these terrible years. People would ask more questions now.’
Timeline of Bury chaos Dec 2018: Steve Dale buys Bury FC for £1 and later pays a tax bill to avoid winding-up order.
Apr 2019: Staff and players are not paid their March salaries and a winding-up order is issued. Dale puts the club up for sale with the club needing around £1.6m to pay wages, HMRC and pensions to end of May.
July 2019: The winding-up petition is dismissed by the High Court as Dale proposes a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) to ensure payment of creditors.
Aug 2019: Early League One matches are postponed. Interested parties pull out of a sale and the club are expelled from the EFL.
Dec 2019: A group of fans form a phoenix club, Bury AFC, and gain membership of the North West Counties Football League.
Aug 2020: Dale brands the fan-owned Bury AFC as fake, but they begin the 2020–21 season in the NWCFL.
Nov 2020: Dale places Bury FC into administration.
Jan 2022: Bury Council agrees a deal of £450,000 to recommission Gigg Lane — conditional on Bury FC merging with Bury AFC.
Feb 2022: Fans’ group Est. 1885 agrees deal to buy the stadium.
Oct 2022: A vote to merge Bury FC and Bury AFC fails to reach the threshold of two-thirds and the hopes of a return to Gigg Lane seem dashed.
May 2023: A second vote sees both groups approve the motion by over 90 per cent — with 97 per cent voting to play home games at Gigg Lane.
