April 1923: Wembley Stadium

The old stadium is gone now, of course; the iconic Twin Towers ground into rubble, the gents’ toilets unlamented by anyone with a sense of smell. The demise of the burger concessions have probably improved the average cardiac health of the nation. But the old Wembley was a prodigious feat of engineering, which The Engineer featured across a five-page feature in 1923.

What’s particularly remarkable, considering the four-year duration of the construction project for the new stadium, is how fast it was. The ground for the original stadium was cleared in February 1922 — a considerable project in itself, with over 120,000 cubic yards of clay removed to level the site — and it took less than a year to complete the building of the stadium itself: the project was expedited, the feature says, so that the stadium could host the 1923 FA Cup final (Bolton Wanderers beat West Ham 2-0, but the final is better remembered for the policeman mounted on a white horse who helped to control the 300,000-strong crowd, many of whom were standing around the perimeter of the pitch).