Today's Elland Road stadium, with its impressive facilities, is a lasting monument to Leeds United's triumphant years under Don Revie and is a far cry from the open grass field of Victorian times. Before the turn of the century the land, nestling at the foot of Beeston Hill on the main road to the neighbouring town of Elland, was owned by Bentley's Brewery. It was known as the Old Peacock Ground, named after a local pub standing opposite the playing field. It was from the pub that the club took its nickname of the Peacocks, after being known as the Citizens during the days of Leeds City.
The Old Peacock Ground was bought by Holbeck Rugby Club, for £1,100 in 1897, on condition that it remained a football ground for at least seven years and that the catering rights should be held by Bentley's. Despite problems of getting sufficient labour, Holbeck were able to build a new stand ready for the following season. Rugby was immensely popular in the West Riding, but it was not long before the ground, now known as Elland Road, hosted its first competitive soccer match.
On 23 April 1898, local soccer administrators were delighted when 3,400 people turned up to see Hunslet, forerunners of Leeds City, beat Harrogate 1-0 in the West Yorkshire Cup Final at Elland Road.
Soccer became a regular attraction at the ground during the 1902-03 season when Leeds League soccer side, Leeds Woodville, shared the ground with Holbeck. But it was not until Leeds City were formed that soccer really took root at Elland Road.
Holbeck became defunct in 1904 and put the ground on the market. The men behind Leeds City were anxious to have a ground good enough to support any future application to join the Football League and saw Elland Road as their ideal home. City officials gave instructions to sign the lease on 13 October 1904, for an annual rent of £75 with an option to buy for not more than £5,000 the following March. When the lease was finally signed, in November, the purchase figure was reduced to £4,500.
Two days after giving the all-clear to sign the lease, Leeds City played their first game on the Elland Road turf. City officials were determined to make it a red-letter day in the club's history. The 3,000 crowd were entertained by a local boys match, and a band, before Leeds City were beaten 2-0 by Hull City in a friendly.
After the sale went through, Leeds City directors set about improving the ground as the club prepared to move from the West Yorkshire League to the Football League. In August 1905, work began on an ambitious reconstruction scheme which ended with a £1,050 covered stand for 5,000 people being erected on the west side of the ground.
As soccer grabbed the imagination of the local footballing public, Elland Road pulled in some big early crowds - a 22,000 plus gate, brining in receipts of £487, was recorded for the local derby with Bradford City on 30 December 1905.
Expansion continued in February 1906 as City bought 3,961 square yards of land on the Churwell and Geldard Road side of the ground, for £420, from the Monk's Bridge Iron Company.
Soccer's administrators were anxious to reward the effort that had been made in gaining a foothold in rugby-dominated West Yorkshire and selected Elland Road as the venue for an England trial match in 1906 and an amateur international against Ireland in 1909.
But the Football Association clearly acted in haste by choosing Elland Road for the 1910 FA Cup semi-final between Barnsley and Everton. It turned out to be a disaster because the ground was not big enough to cope with the thousands of fans who poured in to Leeds to see the big game. Although an estimated 36,000 got inside the ground, many could hardly see the pitch and thousands more were locked outside.
The gates were closed even before many of the excursion trains and coaches from Liverpool arrived in the City. Well before kick-off, thousands of disappointed spectators were forced to scramble up Beeston Hill or perch precariously on neighbouring roof-tops to get a fleeting glimpse of the action.
The Athletic News reported: 'It is clear that the Association and the clubs concerned lost considerably by allotting the match to a small ground constructed for Second Division football and not for events of national importance.'
Not surprisingly it was another 20 years before a much-improved Elland Road was to host another FA Cup semi-final.
Financially, Leeds City had always found it hard to make ends meet and when the club fell into the hands of the Receiver in 1912, the Leeds Cricket, Football and Athletic Club offered to take over City's affairs and use Headingley as the soccer ground. On 14 August 1914, however, a Leeds syndicate of sportsmen announced that they had offered to run City, guaranteeing to put down £1,000 and pay an annual ground rent of £250 to keep City at Elland Road.
Despite the constant financial problem, manager Herbert Chapman was anxious to brighten the image of the ground and even arranged for a new flag to be flown from the masthead outside the main stand.
As World War One raged across Europe, Elland Road contributed to the war effort by being used for army drilling and shooting practice.
After City disbanded, the future of Elland Road hung in the balance. There was even a scheme dreamed up in October 1919 to make use of the rich clay deposits below the top soil of the pitch and turn it into a brickyard - even today there is a deep well sunk in the corner of the Spion Kop and West Stand. But Elland Road was spared such an ignominious fate when local club, Yorkshire Amateurs, played several games there before newly-formed Leeds United moved in.
During the 1920s, more changes were made, including the covering of the Elland Road terrace with a wooden barrel-shaped roof which became known as the Scratching Shed. Along the whole length of the pitch on the Lowfields Road side was a stand built on a bank of terracing and opposite the Scratching Shed stood a huge open Spion Kop terrace which got its name, like many other Kops in England, after the hill in South Africa on which 322 British soldiers lost their lives during the Boer War.
During the 1920s, the Football Association considered the ground good enough to stage more England trial games, although on 19 February 1923, one had to be called off because the pitch was covered by six inches of snow.
Rugby briefly returned to the ground when Elland Road hosted the 1938 Rugby Championship Final between Leeds and Hunslet in front of a massive 54,112 crowd. However, even that figure failed to beat the offical 56,796 attendance which saw United and Arsenal fight out a goalless draw on 27 December 1932 - a figure which remained a record at Elland Road for 35 years.
When neighbours Huddersfield Town's main stand was destroyed by fire in April 1950, the Terriers played Easter Saturday and Easter Tuesday fixtures at Elland Road against Derby County and Newcastle United - the latter before a crowd of 37,700. United repeated the good neighbours act in 1985 when Bradford City played three home games at Leeds because Valley Parade was still closed after the tragic fire which swept through Bradford's main stand. Two months after the Valley Parade horror, the 1966 World Cup Final teams from England and West Germany met in a rematch at Elland Road and raised £46,000 for the Fire Disaster Fund. England won 6-4.
United can also testify to the destruction that fire can leave in its wake. During the early hours of Tuesday, 18 September 1956, a blaze swept through the West Stand with such ferocity that large sections of the pitch were scorched by heat.
Fish and chip shop proprietor Arnold Price, whose premises were opposite the main gates, dashed barefoot and pyjama-clad to raise the alarm. But the fire spread so rapidly that the stand roof had already collapsed into the seating area before the fire brigade arrived.
With damage estimated at £100,000, United lost not only the stand, but all the club's kit, records, physiotherapy equipment, dressing-rooms, offices, directors' rooms and press-box, leaving a charred skeleton of twisted, smouldering metal.
As the players helped to clear up the rubble and wreckage during the week, it was clear that it would be impossible to salvage the 2,500-seater stand and, after a five-hour board meeting, the directors decided to launch an appeal to build a new stand with assistance from Leeds City Council.
For manager Raich Carter there was the more immediate problem of preparing for Saturday's home game with Aston Villa. The fire struck just as United had made a fine start to their return to the First Division and Carter was determined that the Villa match should go ahead as scheduled, in an effort to consolidate their position in the table.
He immediately ordered 40 pairs of boots for his players, giving them strict instructions that they should be worn as much as possible to break them in before the game. United's injured players were treated in the home of former trainer Arthur Campey, who had set up in private practice.
The fire-ravaged stand was cordoned-off and the Leeds and Villa players, together with the match officials, changed in the dressing-rooms of the Whitehall Printeries sports ground in Lowfields Road before boarding a coach which took them the short distance to the ground, where they picked their way through the burnt-out shell of the stand to reach the pitch.
United's determination to play the game paid off. They won 1-0 with a John Charles goal and after the game not a single United player reported any blisters.
The public appeal raised £60,000 and at the start of the following season, the new £180,000 West Stand was unveiled. Tickets for the 4,000 seats cost 7s 6d each per game in those days and in front of the seated area was a large paddock capable of holding 6,000 standing spectators - although this was eventually replaced with seats in the successful 1970s. The new West Stand was christened in style with a 2-1 victory over Leicester City on 31 August 1957.
Two years later another fire hit Elland Road - also in the West Stand - but club secretary Cyril Williamson and several directors became fire-fighters to snuff out another potential disaster. After a 2-1 home defeat by Preston Reserves in a Centre League game, the small crowd were wandering home when flames were spotted in the stand behind the directors' box. Williamson and members of the board ran from the club's offices, armed themselves with hoses and put out the fire, thought to have been started by a carelessly dropped cigarette, before much damage could be done.
The West Stand was an impressive structure but the stadium really started to take shape when Don Revie steered United through their golden era. Cash poured into United's coffers as massive crowds turned up to see his successful teams and a lot of the money was pumped back into ground improvements.
It was during the Revie era that the attendance record at Elland Road was set - although the price had to be paid. After forcing a draw at Sunderland in the fifth round of the FA Cup, United brought the Rokerites to Elland Road for a thrilling battle, fought out in front of a record crowd of 57,892.
There had not been sufficient time to make the replay all-ticket and at 7.07pm the gates were shut, locking thousands outside. Inside, the crowd - about 5,000 more than the usual all-ticket limit - were packed like sardines. During the game one of the steel and concrete crush barriers on Lowfields Road gave way under the pressure and amid the panic about 1,000 spectators poured on to the pitch, as police and ambulancemen moved in to tend the injured.
The match was held up as 32 people were ferried to hospital, but luckily no-one was seriously hurt. Some people had also taken their lives into their hands by scrambling on top of the Scratching Shed roof to see the game which, after extra-time, ended 1-1.
With money in the bank, United's directors embarked on a massive improvement scheme to create a stadium worthy of the great sides Revie had assembled. At the end of April 1968, the huge banked terracing of the Spion Kop was stripped away in six weeks to make way for a new roofed Kop, also known as the Geldard End, costing £250,000. During the clearance work United entertained Dundee in a semi-final second-leg game in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. There was the unusual sight of the Kop behind the goal a vast sealed-off gaping emptiness. When the new Kop was completed, United had about 60 feet of space spare behind the goal, so it was turfed and the pitch moved 30 feet towards the Kop.
A further £200,000 was spent in 1970 in the corner linking the Kop and the West Stand and £200,000 was outlayed on the corner of Lowfields Road and the Kop.
Improvements continued in 1974 when the old Scratching Shed was dismantled and replaced by the impressive £500,000 South Stand on Elland Road itself. It held 3,500 seats with a standing paddock at the front capable of holding a further 4,000 fans. But as United's performances on the pitch began to wane, so the building around it ceased. Plans to link the South Stand with Lowfields Road were scrapped because of lack of cash, but the foundations for the corner link are still in place.
Although major construction stopped, cosmetic improvements continued. The South Stand was later made all-seater, and 16 executive boxes added at the top, each one complete with TV set, refrigerator and luxury seating, all linked to a box-holders' executive lounge and restaurant.
Other alterations and additions to the Elland Road scene during the late 1970s and early 1980s continued, including the installation of an 81ft by 5ft electronic score-board in the Kop.
Commercially the club took a major step forward on 30 September 1972, when the Leeds United Sports and Souvenir Shop, to which a well-stocked programme shop was later added, opened.
Hooliganism was to blight the club for many years, and there was a pitch invasion during United's crucial 2-1 home defeat against West Bromwich Albion on 17 April 1971, when referee Ray Tinkler was jostled by irate Leeds fans after allowing the visitors a goal which looked well offside.
Although United became the first club in the country to install a police compound to hold arrested thugs on the ground - in the extension below the link between the Kop and West Stand - crowd trouble continued. The West Brom incident saw United banned from playing at Elland Road for the first four games of the 1971-72 season, playing two games at Huddersfield, one at Hull and another at Sheffield Wednesday during their 'home' exile.
But the lesson was not heeded by the troublemakers. As United were knocked out of the FA Cup by Manchester City at Elland Road on 1978, mounted police went on the pitch and there was a 20-minute delay as missiles were cleared and hooligans arrested. United were banned from staging FA Cup home games for the next three seasons and when United came out of the hat first against West Brom in the fourth round the following year, the 'home' game had to be played at The Hawthorns. The ban was later lifted.
More missiles were thrown during Manchester City's League visit on 29 September 1979, so a section of the South Stand - from where objects were hurled - was closed for a period. Later in the same season the Kop was closed for two matches after more objects were thrown on the pitch against Nottingham Forest. The FA meted out the same punishment after Leeds and Newcastle players were taken off the pitch on 30 October 1982, when ball-bearings were thrown.
During the two-match Kop closure in 1982 it was reckoned that United actually benefited financially because fans watched the next two home games from the more expensive seated areas.
Over the years Elland Road has seen some memorable European nights under its floodlights as Revie's teams destroyed a succession of the best teams that the continent could provide.
Floodlit football first came to Elland Road on 9 November 1953, when Hibernian provided the opposition for the big switch-on of the £7,000 lights - said to be the most expensive in the country at the time. The game pulled in 31,500 spectators who saw two goals apiece from John Charles and manager Raich Carter as Leeds beat the Scottish side 4-1. It was the first of several Monday night games against teams from north of the border and in successive weeks, Dundee and Falkirk were the visitors to Elland Road.
Three new floodlights were put up in 1974 and a fourth, in the south-east corner, was erected four years later. At 260ft, the diamond-shaped lights are the highest in Europe, with 55 lamps on each pylon.
Record receipts at Elland Road were established on 10 April 1980, when the FA Cup semi-final replay between West Ham United and Everton brought in £346,483. The record for a game involving United at Elland Road is £90,000 from the European Cup semi-final against Barcelona on 9 April 1975. However, the Barcelona game did not attract the biggest European crowd at Leeds. That was achieved when Rangers were the visitors for the Fairs Cup quarter-final in 1968 when 50,498 fans were shoe-horned into the ground.
The first leg of the Rangers tie at Ibrox was covered by closed-circuit TV and watched by 22,000 supporters at Elland Road. Television cameras were regular visitors to Elland Road during the Revie heydays, but the first match to be screened entirely live was on 4 January 1985, when FA Cup holders Everton began their defence with a convincing 2-0 win against Second Division Leeds. Coincidentally, the first visit by BBC Match of the Day cameras, on 20 March 1965, was also for a Leeds-Everton game. Leeds won the First Division match 4-1.
For many years the pitch was a churned-up muddy morass and in November 1969, United considered installing an experimental pitch cover made of treated nylon, but the idea was later scrapped. A couple of months later, United called in experts from the Sports Turf Research Institute at Bingley and the pitch was reseeded to make it one of the finest surfaces in the country.
Undersoil heating was later installed in an effort to keep the pitch in prime condition during the bitter West Yorkshire winters, thus reducing the number of games which had to be called off. Before the advent of the undersoil heating the pitch, which now measures 117 yards by 76 yards, was protected in winter by tons of straw and burning braziers.
Nothing, however, could save United the embarrassment of losing a youth international game to a local working mens' club pitch in 1964. On 14 March that year the England-Wales match, scheduled for Elland Road, was switched to the city's East End Park WMC ground after United's pitch was waterlogged.
In the big freeze of 1963, Leeds experimented with de-icing pellets which successfully cleared part of a rock-hard surface but the club decided against using them over the whole pitch. To obtain much-needed match practice, Leeds played a Saturday morning friendly against Bradford at Elland Road dog-track. They drew 2-2 with the Park Avenue club on a snow-covered pitch. The clubs' reserve teams also met in similar fashion.
Superstitious Revie was convinced that the bad luck his team seemed to suffer stemmed from a curse laid on the ground long before football had been played there, so in 1971 he called in a gypsy to lift that curse.
The pitch had improved so much that Rugby League was able to make a permanent return to Elland Road when New Hunslet's home at the nearby greyhound stadium was demolished. Apart from staging New Hunslet's games, including a Great Britain v New Zealand Test match in November 1985.
Two other sports to make their presence felt at Elland Road have been American Football and Gaelic Football. The Leeds Cougars, members of the British American Football League, switched from their base at Bramley Rugby League Club's McLaren Field to Elland Road in May 1986. However, they moved off the following year because extra work needed doing on the pitch. A Gaelic Football match between Dublin and Mayo, organized by the Yorkshire County Board of the Gaelic Athletic Association, was played at Elland Road in 1987.
The ground has even staged live rock concerts with music fans flocking to Elland Road to see the band Queen in 1982 and U2 five years later. Two weeks after U2's performance, Elland Road hosted a three-day Jehovah's Witnesses Convention which attracted 15,000 people.
Exciting new plans to develop Elland Road and its surroundings as a major sporting complex were revealed in a major deal between United and Leeds City Council in the summer of 1985. United sold the ground to the Council for £2.5 million and, in return, the Council granted the club a 125-year lease and unveiled ambitious plans to improve the stadium and neighbouring sporting facilities.
In 1987 outline plans were designed by a Newcastle-based firm of architects and put forward by Baltic Consortium and W.H. White, developers. The estimated costs varied between £50 million and £75 million. The scheme included replacing the 1920s Lowfields Road stand with a new 7,500-seater stand, with a 2,000-seater indoor sports arena at the other side of the stand.
Plans for the stadium complex also included a shopping centre, ice rink, cricket hall, cinema, nightclub, café, restaurant, water park, leisure centre and shops. Other innovations included provision for a railway halt for visiting supporters, and an open-air car-park on three levels.
As yet none of the spectacular plans have been put into practice, but they have not been killed off.

CAPACITY; 40,000
West Stand:
Following a fire which destroyed the original West Stand in September 1956, a public appeal raised £60,000 towards a new one which was opened in August 1957 at a cost of £180,000.
The roof of the West Stand has a television commentary gantry and walkway for TV personnel who may be asked to film here on a matchday.
The radio and press also have facilities in this stand so they can commentate direct to the public and make notes for their respective papers.
This stand houses the Directors Box, where both home and away Team Directors may sit to enjoy the match, plus the Club Doctor. George Graham also sits in this stand during the first half of a match and has had a telephone installed in the home team dug out.
South Stand:
Was known commonly as the Scratching Shed until improvements in 1974 saw an impressive £500,000 new South Stand built with 16 Executive Boxes linked to an Executive Restaurant. This was again improved in 1988/89 when an additional 16 boxes were built.
During 1974 plans to link the South Stand with Lowfields Road were shelved, this was finally achieved and opened in September 1991 and called the SOUTH EAST CORNER.
South East Corner: is used for the visiting fans, when a large crowd is expected the whole of the South Stand is then allocated.
The Family Stand was located in this area and it proved so popular that members outnumbered seats. This was moved into the new impressive East Stand when finally completed.
East Stand:
This was built in 1992/93 and replaced the existing Lowfields Road Stand. 25 extra Executive Boxes were incorporated during the building of this stand.
This is the biggest cantilever stand in the world. The bottom tier hold the YEP Family Stand members which runs to a staggering 10,000 fans. The Family Stand was moved from the South Stand in season 1993/94 when the work was completed. The East Stand holds a shopping mall and with its shops and cafe is purpose built for the families.
Leeds United are proud that we are winning more families back to Elland Road.
The North Stand:
formally referred to as the KOP (Spion Kop); This was roofed in 1968 and during the early 80's an electronic scoreboard was installed under the roof. There was a red flashing light located in the roof which if operated required the Referee to stop the game. A similar light was also located in the roof of the South Stand.
The name Kop came from the South African name Spion Kop; it was brought from South Africa by the East Lancs regiment, this regiment being mainly made up of men from Liverpool. When they were fighting in South Africa (Boar War) and they were defending a hill called the Spion Kop, when they returned home and went to see Liverpool play, at the rear of one of the goals there was a hillock which reminded them of the hill in south Africa, so they named it the Spion Kop. As Liverpool had the original Spion Kop other grounds took on this idea and today most grounds have at one end of their ground a Kop.
The Revie.North Stand:
During the close season of 1994, 7,000 seats were installed to replace what had previously been known as the Kop (as per the above information), making Elland Road an all-seat stadium as directed by the Justice Taylor Report.
This was officially opened in October by the President of the club, Lord Harewood and Mrs E Revie the late Don Revie's widow. The interior area has been completely refurbished providing carpeted lounge area and new fast-food refreshment bars.
Banqueting Suite:
This area was opened in April 1992 and is ideally located in the heart of Yorkshire. It has proved to be one of the most popular and sophisticated venues in Leeds for entertaining clients and their guests.
The Boardroom:
This houses some of the trophies from both past and present seasons. This is also the room where all the Directors of the club meet and where major decisions concerning the club are made.
The Trophy Cabinet:
These house the majority of the trophies that the teams have won on their travels around the world; including a replica miniature of the F.A. Cup and World Cup. In 1966 after England won the World Cup all professional clubs received a miniature World Cup to keep. Also every team who wins the F.A. cup receives a miniature to keep. Outside the Members Bar is a cabinet where Don Revie donated a lot of his trophies to the club, including one of his England Caps. In those days players received a Cap every time they played for their country. Today players receive a Cap for every three times they represent their country.
Pitch:
The pitch measures 108 metres by 70 metres (117 yards by 76 yards). There are 59 miles of piping in the undersoil heating system, only a blizzard/fog/flood or very extraordinary circumstances would force the club to cancel a match. There is a natural well under the ground approximately 70ft down, this means that should the need arise Leeds can draw on their own supply of water, saying that though, the first time they used it the pitch turned black as the water was too cold. Leeds now have a pumping system under the South Stand.
Security:
There is a Ground Control Box situated at the ground, the most advanced in Europe, with security cameras all around the ground, videos and pictures are taken of everyone entering the ground. Kick down advertising boards are all around the pitch for safety and there are gates at the front of the Revie Stand.
The Stadium has been host to live rock concerts with music fans flocking to Elland Road to see the band Queen in 1982 and U2 five years later.
Elland Road was chosen as one of the eight venues for Euro '96 and hosted the matches very successfully.
During the close season of 1994 the names of all Leeds United players who have represented their country were listed on an International Honours Board in the club reception area and this is updated regularly.