Bootham Crescent: Sharing Memories, Shaping Place - a discussion on sporting heritage

Bootham Crescent has been home to York City FC since 1932 but when the Club moves to the new Community Stadium at Monk’s Cross the ground will be redeveloped for housing. CBA Executive Director Neil Redfern is joined by Jason Wood, Director at Heritage Consultancy Services and Keith Emerick, Inspector of Ancient Monuments at Historic England who discuss the Bootham Crescent Football Ground Sharing Memories, Shaping Place project and share experiences from other football ground relocation projects. The last 25 years have witnessed a concentrated and comprehensive period of demolition, redevelopment and relocation of football grounds. Many have now disappeared below housing estates, supermarkets and retail parks, without a trace or nod of recognition to their history and heritage. Yet research has shown that football grounds are keenly valued as cherished places and repositories of memory, conveying intense senses of identity and belonging with the power to stir hearts and minds and evoke strong and enduring social responses. This is especially true when grounds are relocated and the fan base is dislocated. Interrogating the relationship between place and memory, between tangible and intangible heritage, is always very difficult but for football in particular it is a very important challenge, and one that remains under-researched. Bootham Crescent offers an opportunity to meet this challenge, to test imaginative ways of involving people for whom the ground holds great meaning, and to explore why they value the site and how it should be memorialised.