Roots Hall has been home to the club since 1955. One of their homes before that was at the famous Kursaal, an amusement park on the seafront at Southend. The site at Roots Hall is on a sloping piece of land, which initially, after the main pitch area had been levelled, allowed the South Terrace to reach a great height. However, the Shrimpers have regularly gone through periods of financial hardship and during one of these times, in the early 1990s, most of this terrace was sold off for housing development leaving the present smaller two tier stand. At the opposite end of the ground is, of course, the North Stand, which houses the away fans and is a single tier stand. The ground is all-seater and houses just over 12,000 spectators.
Executive offices are housed in a building tacked on to the Main or East Stand.
Because the ground is levelled out of the hillside, the sloping main car park is at a different level to the stands adjacent to it. A nice touch is provided by a small covered bridge which leads from the turnstiles on this car park to the Main Stand. There are four high floodlight stanchions at each corner of the ground
This is what I call a proper football ground, having grown, and suffered, with the club over the years. However, at the moment it appears to be suffering, looking in need of a bit of TLC. This no doubt due to the projected move to the Fossetts Farm development which has been mooted for about the last ten years, as well as the financial strains imposed on many smaller clubs these days. The twists and turns of the on-going Fossetts Farm saga are way beyond me and there are many strands of the plan which need to be woven together before it can get started. Nevertheless, the owner and chairman, Ron Martin, keeps promising fans that action on the new ground is imminent. So far, with little sign of progress.
The day was cold and gloomy when I arrived at the main car park at Roots Hall. I had been to a match here before when Forest were in the Third Division, or League 1 as it was euphemistically called, so I didn't follow my usual practice of getting lost on the way. I left the car in the main car park and started to wander round the ground, looking for someone to ask about a view into the ground. Sadly no one appeared to be around, so I just walked right around the ground. The actual plot of land the ground stands on is quite large, but it is shoe-horned into the local residential housing. This means that to get a good view of the ground, even from the outside, is very difficult and to walk around it means losing sight of it for quite some distance, navigating by floodlight pylons.
The nearest I was likely to come to getting a good look at the ground seemed to be when I came across a chap washing his car in the roadway leading to the entrance to the West Stand. Apparently he has a good view of the ground from his attic window, but, sadly, his family were enjoying a Sunday morning lie-in and he wouldn't let me into the house!!
However, as so often, luck was on my side. Having completed my circumnavigation, I approached one of the entrances to the ground and found it open. I checked to see if there was anyone who was available to ask permission to enter the ground, but no one was in view. I wandered in, still looking for a responsible person. No luck, but suddenly, I found myself with a view of the pitch. This was too good to miss; I had a good look around, took my videos and photos and melted away into the car park. Roots Hall might be nearing the end of it's football life or it might not, but it is of a type of ground that is disappearing to be replaced by the soulless bowls.
It might be tatty, expensive to maintain and not really able to provide the space necessary to host functions and extend clubs' revenue streams, but you can almost see and hear the heroes of the past as you walk around it.
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