File:The Tote End, Eastville Stadium, Bristol 1986 (301079828).jpg
Rovers were forced out because they could no longer afford the £50,000 per year rent being charged by their landlords, The Bristol Stadium Company. Quite simply, Eastville was costing Rovers around £2,000 per home game, which with falling gates in the 1980's (this was the era of Heysel and the Bradford fire) resulted in a loss for almost every match.
Sharing Bristol City's Ashton Gate was not an option because the rent there would have been on a par with Eastville. So for the next decade, Rovers played 12 miles away at Twerton Park in Bath (thank you, Bath City) before returning to Bristol in 1996 to play at the Memorial Stadium. The Tote End terrace at Eastville was demolished in August 1987, and the rest of the Stadium was reduced to rubble ten years later after the greyhounds relocated. A beastly Ikea superstore was built on the site in 1998.
Note: I took this photo with about ten minutes of the game left and if you look closely at the front of the Tote, you can just make out Rovers' Chief Executive, Gordon Bennett taking one last stroll around the ground.(Reusing this file)
- You are free:
- to share – to copy, distribute and transmit the work
- to remix – to adapt the work
- Under the following conditions:
- attribution – You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
![]() |
This image, originally posted to Flickr, was reviewed on December 30, 2007 by the administrator or reviewer File Upload Bot (Magnus Manske), who confirmed that it was available on Flickr under the stated license on that date. |
Camera location | ![]() | View this and other nearby images on: OpenStreetMap | ![]() |
---|