John Walker
1885

C Coy Volunteer Battalion Royal Scots moved their H.Q from Torphichen to Armadale in about 1880. They had a hall in South Street and trained at the Volunteer field in North Street. In 1881, Armadale Star FC were granted use of the park as long as they joined the Volunteers. After agreeing to this the name was changed to Armadale Volunteers FC.

The ground became the home of Armadale FC in September 1889. The Volunteer training moved to Heatherfield. It is one of the oldest football grounds in the country. It holds the attendance record for West Lothian and has been a popular venue for schoolboy internationals and cup finals.

The south end of the ground was raised in 1920 using builder's rubble from the new council housing in the Greig Crescent area. The terracing was raised again in 1955 but lowered and flattened out in the early 1990s.

A grandstand holding 700 was erected in the 1920s but destroyed by fire in the mid 1930s. A covered enclosure was built in 1950 with 103 tip-up seats although this was gone by the early 1960s. The enclosure was part funded by the sale of land to the town council to create a boundry wall and lane to the new Burns Avenue scheme.

Flood lights were installed in 1954, mostly for glamour friendlies, though in 1956 Armadale hosted Rosewell Rosedale in the first floodlit competitive junior match.

OUR TOWN, OUR TEAM

Armadale grew rapidly as an industrial town in the mid-Victorian period, discovering bowls, cricket, quoits and hainching before the local football club was formed in 1879. This became the passion for the men and boys of the town for three generations.

The town’s participation in the national game has survived many small and three large crisis. Trade depression and the advent of professional football killed off the first senior club in the 1890s. The Great Depression and the SFA’s phobias about reduced entry for the unemployed and the dog racing ended the revived senior club in the early 1930s. Another periods of high unemployment - this time accompanied by the home-grown vandalism - nearly put paid to Armadale Thistle in the late 1980s.

That the club survives is a tribute to the men and women who played for it or gave their voluntary labour to support it over the years. It remains the most romantic of West Lothian clubs, having produced no fewer than :-

Eight Scotland internationals and one for England!

Two European club competition winners

Played to the biggest-ever crowds in West Lothian

And half the current Scottish League clubs have been beaten by Armadale.

With the upturn in fortunes of the club on the field; the huge success of the local boys’ club in recent years creating players of the future; and a major expansion of the town underway with the symbolic and practical effects of the return of the railway service, the future for Armadale and its favourite sport looks bright.

History Of Armadale Thistle FC Continued

.