Groundtastic GT23 | Page 35

Barry Town Floodlights Jenner Park - Then & Now Groundtastic takes a look at the Welsh club’s transformed home ground Twenty years ago one would have been hard pressed to find a gloomier, more decrepit ground in the upper echelons of English non-league football than Barry Town’s Jenner Park. Home to the South Wales club since their election to the Southern League in 1913, precious little had been done to update the facilities in the intervening years. At the Barry Road end of the ground, atop a discoloured slab of concrete banking, stood a tumbledown set of buildings seemingly on the verge of imminent collapse. The most prominent of these was the rusting hulk of a stand under whose flaking roof an assortment of 100 chairs were laid out. Next to the stand was an ageing dressing room block, also deteriorating fast The top picture (by Bob Lilliman) was taken in 1980 and with the faded remains of an and shows the dilapidated buildings at the Barry advertisement just about legible on Road end. The lower picture shows the same view its tattered roof. today (by Vince Taylor). Groundtastic page 35 Issue 23