Main Stand Façade at Celtic Park…Setting the scene

Back in July the former Celtic Director Tom Grant gave a huge bag of photograph prints to The Celtic Star in order to allow us to share them with the Celtic support.  Previously Tom had given us all his photographs which he had taken in his role as Stadium Director working for Fergus McCann to deliver his vision of a 60,000 all seated stadium at Celtic Park.

Those remarkable photos of the demolition of the old Celtic Park and the rebuilding from start to finish of the wonderful stadium we know and love today appeared on The Celtic Star during the covid year and were hugely popular.

Tom’s latest batch of photos, which he had stored up in his loft, cover both Celtic Park and Barrowfield from the 1970s through to the 1990s.  We have now had all his original photographs – totalling around 800 prints – professionally scanned and digitalised so that we can start to share them with the Celtic support only on The Celtic Star and we’re starting today.

There are so many photographs of Celtic legends taken at Celtic’s Barrowfield  training base including the likes of Danny McGrain and Kenny Dalglish, all photographs that have never been published previously.

Looking at his photographs of the facilities at Celtic’s hitherto training ground, Tom told us that this is exactly how Barrowfield looked when the Lisbon Lions trained there, remarkable really when you see the state of it!

Then there’s Celtic Park and there are so many covering construction works over the years at the old Holy Ground. There are so many of the Jungle for instance but we’ll save them for another day.  Work like installing undersoil heating for the first time, or building the control tower between the Main stand and the Rangers end and the two level turnstiles at the Rangers end which no-one seems to remember! The maintenance work on the old stadium was never ending and there are so many photos which will bring back old memories for the supporters old enough to remember.

The younger Celtic supporters can marvel as they get to see the facilities that we used to endure and enjoy! Yet it was always a place that we called Paradise and still do.

We’ll start with the front door at Celtic Park and the construction and addition of the Main Stand façade at Celtic Park that we all know and love today. This all happened in Celtic’s Centenary season and Matt Corr will take up the story in our next article as he talks about that the addition of the current façade at Celtic Park.

This as how Celtic Park looked just as work was about to start on the new façade…turn to the next page to view the first batch of these exclusive photographs and thanks again to Celtic Star reader Tom Grant for once again selecting his favourite Celtic site to showcase these historic Celtic images to the wider Celtic family for the first time. Please share this article on social media if you can.

TOM GRANT’S PHOTOS START ON THE NEXT PAGE…