St.James Park.

St.James' Park is a 52,387 all seater stadium in the city center of Newcastle Upon Tyne. The stadiums capacity makes it the 7th largest football stadium in the United Kingdom. St James is clearly visible in the city's skyline and sports an usual shaped design, largely due to building restrictions.

St.James' Park is the only stadium outside London to fall in it's city center, it is roughly 500 metres away from Central Station, the main train station in Newcastle.

The stadium has been home to Newcastle United since the club was formed in 1892, the four stands are known as the Milburn Stand, The Leazes End, The East Stand, The Gallowgate.

The Milburn stand and Leazes end are double tiered, separated by a level of executive boxes; The East Stand and Gallowgate End are single tiered, with boxes also at the top of the Gallowgate. all four corners have been filled in with seating, joining the main stands up to a uniform level.

Away fans for league matches are accommodated in the upper level, in the north west corner, although the lower tier has also been used for FA Cup matches.

As well as the normal facilities offered by any Premier LEague Stadium, St.James Park also contains conference and banquiting facilities. The Gallowgate Stand features Shearer's Bar and the club shop, also a cafe and a club museum. The Milburn stand has the main box office.

St.James' Park is unique in the fact that it is the only Premier League stadium without it's own scoreboard, although digital red clocks were added to the corners of the ad boards in 2007.

St.James Park was first used by Newcastle in 1892 although Newcastle East End and Newcastle West End had played there since 1880. In 1958 three supporters tried to dig a tunnel under the stadium so they could play on the pitch at night, five days into the dig it collapse and killed two of them.

The stadium received only a modest reconstruction up until the 1990's when Sir John Hall led a consortium in a bitter takeover battle for the club and by 1995 the stadium had reached a capacity of 36,000. Even though expanded the stadium was still a sell out, due to the success of Kevin Keegan who had transformed the club from 2nd Division stugglers to Premier League title chasers.

Newcastle submitted plans to relocate to a new stadium in Leazes Park with the current stadium reduced in size and used for the Newcastle Falcons Rugby Club but this fell through due to political wranglings and instead the stadium was increased by adding extra tiers to the Leazes End and the Milburn Stand.

During the next expanision, executive boxes in the East Stand had been demolished to make way for new seating blocks which increased the capacoty to 52,143. In 2005 the Gallowgate was redeveloped with a bar being built below the upper tier. During the excavation the builders discovered steps that led to the old Gallowgate terrace, these had simply been covered up, the steps were removed and the renovation saw the completion of Shearer's Bar, and extended club shop, a cafe and club museum.

The clubs has announced further plans to increase St.James' Park with a £300million development to include a conference centre, hotels and luxury apartments, this will also see an increase to the Gallowgate End which will bring the total capacity upto 60,000. Development on the East Stand is restricted due to the Leazes Terrace.

Stadium Facts

The stadium has a capacity of 52,387, making it:

• the third largest Premier League ground, behind Arsenal's Emirates Stadium and Manchester United's Old Trafford ;
• the fourth largest football stadium in England when including Wembley Stadium ;
• seventh largest football stadium in The United Kingdom overall when including the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff , Celtic Park and Hampden Park in Scotland .

Previous League Champions