The grandstand at Fareham
Town’s Cams Alders ground in
February 2020
Photo: Paul Claydon
Aiming High
Vince Taylor reports on the grounds of Fareham Town
Look at any reasonably sized grandstand built at a non-league ground before the 1990s
and the chances are that its seating tier will be elevated. It was a given that such would be
the case, for didn’t the expression ‘a grandstand view’ imply a panoramic and mostly uninterrupted
view of proceedings? Regrettably, the modern tendency to favour low prefabricated
stands set at ground level, with all the inherent viewing problems, has all but
rendered this definition obsolete.
Back in the 1970s when the local council were planning Fareham Town’s long-awaited
new ground at Cams Alders, they naturally opted for a grandstand with an elevated seating
tier. But whoever designed it took it one step further, or rather several steps further,
by drawing up a 30ft high structure with a huge goal-post framed roof, together with a
hefty climb up to the seats.
The opening of the new Cams Alders ground in September 1975 signalled the end of
Fareham Town’s quest for an enclosed ground, a cause for which they had been fighting
ever since their formation in 1946. Fareham Town were, in effect, successors to Fareham
FC, who were the Hampshire town’s football standard bearers between the wars. Playing
at Beaconsfield Meadow, off Gosport Road, which had a small stand, they competed in
the Hampshire League from 1924 to 1932, before travelling costs forced them to revert to
the Portsmouth League.
Incorporating Fareham FC, Fareham Brotherhood and Fareham Youth Club into their
ranks in 1947, Fareham Town progressed from the Portsmouth League to the Hampshire
League Division Three in 1949/50. Home was the Bath Lane Recreation Ground, which
they shared with Fareham Cricket Club. Situated hard up against Fareham Creek, and
with the gasholders of Fareham Gasworks close by, the football club’s pitch occupied the
southern part of the recreation ground, with the creek immediately behind. The Creeksiders,
as they were appropriately nicknamed, were promoted to the Hampshire League in
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