Plough Lane Plough Lane Plough Lane was a football stadium in Wimbledon, south west London. For nearly eighty years it was the home ground of Wimbledon Football Club, from September 1912 until May 1991, when the club moved their first team home matches to Selhurst Park as part of a groundshare agreement with Crystal Palace. Both clubs' reserve teams then used Plough Lane as their home ground until 1998, when the site was sold to Safeway. Whilst site redevelopment plans were negotiated, the stadium remained derelict for several years until it was finally demolished in 2002. The site then became a private
Crystal Palace F.C. (1861) had been founded in 1857 by the Crystal Palace Company and played on the same pitch within Crystal Palace Park. Although both the cricket club and football club were amateur, they formed part of the Crystal Palace Company’s commercial enterprise, which was intended to generate revenue. Membership of the club was by subscription only, at a price of one guinea per season, and spectators who wished to watch the games had to pay the one-shilling entrance-fee into Crystal Palace Park. The football club’s players were not company-employees; typical membership was formed from wealthy upper-middle-class businessmen, men who could afford the