Lost home ends: Northampton
Words: Tom Reed
Images: Various
I was born under the Hotel End,
I was born under the Hotel End
knives were made for knifing,
guns were made to shoot,
if you come in the Hotel End
we’ll all stick in the boot.
Imagine what a visceral thrill it was as a kid, to hear that chant on the terrace at Northampton Town FC, when the nearest thing to excitement on a Saturday was a shopping trip with your mum.
Northampton’s bus station was a concrete spaceship and there was a monkey in the shoe shop window but nothing could live up to the Hotel End at Northampton’s old County Ground.
Of course, there were no guns, a few rare nutters with blades maybe but the Hotel End had a mystique all of its own, a tin roofed enclosure where the “singers“ went, that felt massive at the time but looking back, was relatively modest, like all our lower league dreams that fade over time.
Growing up on one of Northampton’s Eastern District council estates there was nothing to do but football.
One lad had a Sinclair ZX spectrum computer with Kickstart game but the lure of hitting fly-away balls against walls was always too strong.
Even in those 80s days, kids had a penchant for polyester and inevitably that Liverpool Candy kit or Spurs when Gazza-mania hit, never the pinstriped number that saw Northampton Town win Division Four under Graham Carr with 99 points.
His son Alan, the comedian, was more into Agatha Christie and recounts the humdrum but loving life in the shoe town in an upcoming TV show but I channeled my passion into the Cobblers and that dirty old Hotel End.
You could get there on the number 51 bus in 10 minutes and walk into a completely different world of expectancy, fried onions, horse shit and players that could raise the roof and clear the stand in equal measure.
Cobblers were mostly crap but there was an immediacy that is still unmatched in my life.
I used to buy a Boost chocolate bar from the petrol station on the corner of the ground but nine times out of ten it would remain unopened, its wrapper well thumbed, as I stood there, engrossed.
Walking up Abington Avenue past the houses and away fans chanting their weird chants about weird places like Walsall I thought I’d never go to.
One day we saw an older guy who used to play football with us in our usual 20-a-side games sprint past, being “run” by Chester, saying “alright” on the way past, then the Chester lads being run back and him stopping for a chat before carrying on up the road in pursuit.
He’d have had to have dodged the mounted division dung while avoiding being done in by lads from the River Dee.
The County Tavern was literally a pub on the corner of the Hotel End which was manna from heaven for last minute pints, not like today where you might not even find a boozer at out of town venues.
Always well-oiled the Cobblers fans with the White Elephant, home of the Infamous “Elly Boys” round the corner, more than happy to give anyone making a show of themselves a kick up the arse.
My father used to have a pint in the Abington Park Hotel with its microbrewery and Cobblers Ale but he couldn’t cope with how crap Northampton were and would leave me to go in the game with my mates, coming in to collect me when they opened the gates for the last 10 minutes.
The move to the Hotel End from the family enclosure was inevitable. It had a roof for starters but the lure of the chanting and the movement was too much for a wide eyed kid who had only consumed football on Match Of The Day.
Norther-ton Norther-ton Norther-ton,
Norther-ton Norther-ton Norther-tooon,
Northerton-ton Norther-ton Norther-ton
Norther-ton
North-amp-ton
Sounded the song to “here we go”, with each syllable blending into the last and the last two pronounced as Fampton by the London overspill fans that made the Midlands club such a melting pot.
As you went through the turnstiles for something approaching £4 there was a fuck off floodlight pylon as an introduction and a queue for the masochists hungry for a Tony Ansell burger.
There were all sorts of jokes about what went into the fayre from the local entrepreneur but a bite to eat there was an institution and at least the open toilets were close by, with the odd rat for company when having a slash, al fresco.
The County Ground was three sided and shared with the cricket club so the Hotel End was adjacent to the outfield for leather on willow but the chants were well amplified by the close roof and never dissipated into the cricket member’s stands.
The away followings felt like miles away in one of the original open air Spion Kops that had angry supporters from Hereford and Hull running up and down looking for penalties.
“You’ll never make the station” chanted the Hotel Enders and “bring on the dustbin” when an away player was hacked down.
The Hotel End was a place of names, faces and legends, some of whom have been lost in myth and others still going up the Cobblers to this day.
Mad Mick and his bullwhip that he was said to have cracked on the Hotel End, cementing his nickname and with a habit of dressing as a droog from A Clockwork Orange.
Mr G Harris, one of the original boot boys from the town that made the shoes and a black lad which throws the cat amongst the pigeons when considering skinhead culture.
Oh the tales Mr Harris could tell but the main thing was turning up week in week out for your town.
The ascent up through Hotel End to stand with the singers was a right of passage for a teenager of no little trepidation but an irresistible one.
Edging up one step at a time, listening for the bang of the corrugated iron, the odd blast of an air horn and then a surge and you were back down where you started.
The claret coloured crush barriers markers on an ascent like climbers up Everest.
“We’ll get there at some point” being a mantra for the club itself.
One night we played Mansfield under the lights and we’d made the back with the singers.
The pitch was the greenest thing I’d seen, like the first day of Wimbledon on acid.
The Hotel End swayed as Northampton smashed Mansfield 5–1, it was Hungary 1953, and Steve Terry chipped the keeper wearing a headband.
At that moment. Even for a second we were the best team in the world and the Hotel End was the best home end in the galaxy.
It fucking purred and everyone on it was mustard like the condiment dripping off a Tony Ansell double.
The very next game, we lost 7-0, no word of a lie.
I would give anything for one more match there, as would many born in the Barratt Maternity Ward, the test of a true Northamptonian.
My dad would be waiting for me. The Boost bar unopened.
I’m a knock kneed chicken
I’m a bow legged hen
I ent been so happy since I don’t know when
I walk with wiggle and giggle and squawk,
doing the Hotel boot walk.
Tom is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on Twitter: @tomreedwriting
