#2 Everton - Goodison Park – Capacity 39,572
Perhaps one of the most intriguing stories comes from Everton’s ground ‘Goodison Park’. Believe it or not, it is named after a Yorkshire civil engineer who had a particular expertise in planning trenches for sewage pipes!
He was called George William Goodison who, back in the 1860’s, had a road named after him.
The tale was actually told in a local football team’s match programme, Bootle FC (based in Liverpool) and details his early life and exploits.
Basically, George was born in 1846 in Holbeck, Leeds, and as a young boy, went to study at the Mechanics Institute based in Yorkshire.
When he was 15, (in 1861) he relocated to a place in Great Crosby (in Liverpool) called Kershaw Terrace with a gentleman called Alfred Taylor and his family. A man with a keen eye, George Goodison surveyed some land that had originally been a flower and vegetable nursery owned by the local council, who were planning to use the site as land for housing and wanted to ensure sufficient sewage systems would be in place.
George did this so successfully that the main road that was at the centre of the development was named Goodison Road after him.
In 1892 as the new stadium for Everton FC was being constructed, the football club’s owners decided to call it after the road it was being built on and Goodison Park was born, ensuring George William Goodison’s name was passed into sporting folklore!
