The construction of St. Andrews and The Peaky Blinders.

English: An Ordnance Survey map from 1890 showing Muntz Street, the home ground of Small Heath F.C. (now called Birmingham City F.C.), which was demolished in 1907 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Director Harry Morris identified a site for a new ground in Bordesley, some three-quarters of a mile (1 km) from Muntz Street towards the city centre. Covering an area of 7.5 acres (3 ha), bounded by Cattell Road, Coventry Road, Tilton Road, Garrison Lane and the railway, and near St Andrew's church, the site was near to where a brickworks had once operated. Though Morris described the land itself as "a wilderness of stagnant water and muddy slopes", the Sporting Mail considered it "very favourably situated for obtaining easy communication with the city and many of the suburbs, and will be served by an excellent service of electric cars, while the provision of a railway station close at hand is also considered as within the bounds of possibility."

The club took the land on a 21-year lease, and entrusted the role of surveyor and engineer to a local carpenter, Harry Pumfrey, who despite a lack of qualifications produced plans "which would have done credit to the most expensive professional architect". Club director Thomas Turley, a builder, acted as clerk of works, and it is estimated the club saved more than £2,000 in professional fees by keeping the work in-house. Tradition has it that gypsies, evicted from the site before work could begin, laid a 100-year curse on the club;  although gypsies are known to have camped nearby, there is no contemporary evidence for their eviction by the club, and construction began in February 1906.

Artesian springs, which kept the land flooded, had to be drained and blocked off with tons of rubble before soil could be laid on top. To create height for the terracing on the Coventry Road side of the ground, the club offered the site as a tip, local people paying a total of £800 (£72,900 today) for dumping an estimated 100,000 loads of rubbish. This embankment was known from the beginning as the Spion Kop, stood 110 terraces high at its highest point, and had a reported capacity of 48,000 spectators, each paying 6d (£2.28 today). The Grandstand, on the Garrison Lane side of the ground, was 123 yards (112 m) in length. It held 6,000 seats divided among six sections, priced from 1s to 2s (£4.60 to £9.10 today), and all accesses were lit by electricity. In front of the stand was space for 5,000 to stand under cover. Beneath the stand were refreshment rooms, changing rooms, a training area with plunge bath, a billiard room donated by brewery magnate Sir John Holder, and the club's boardroom and offices, which hitherto had been maintained in premises in Birmingham city centre. Behind the goal at the railway end of the ground was space for a further 4,000 standing spectators, and access to the ground was gained via turnstiles on three sides of the ground. Total capacity was estimated at 75,000, and construction cost at £10,000 (£910,000 today). The playing surface, at 115 by 75 yards (105 m × 69 m), was one of the largest in the country, had a four-yard (3.7 m) grassed border, and was surrounded by a cinder running track.

 ^{Several people claim that the ground was built on the site of the brickworks, but this is not so, as can be seen from the two maps published in an earlier article on this blog. The brickworks were to the west of the swampy area on which the site was constructed.  The Peaky Blinders, who have figured in a BBC drama series recently, and any involvement that they may have had with St. Andrews has recently been the subject of much speculation. Although the series suggests that they were heavily into running an illegal betting outfit there is no contemporary evidence to suggest that they were and if the claim is true then they would have been too busy on racing Saturday's to have been at any Blues matches. They may however have been involved in supplying material for the tip on which Spionkop was built as there was ready money to be made from the operation. Incidentally I do wonder if the fictitious name of the gang, which is "Shelby", is a play, by the author on the districts  of Sheldon and Bordersley where they operated.}