Grundy Hill was the former home stadium of Horwich RMI

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

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Horwich Horwich ( ) is a town and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. Prior to 1974 in the historic county of Lancashire. It is southeast of Chorley, northwest of Bolton and northwest of Manchester. It l ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, near the Horwich Leisure Centre. The ground had a capacity of approximately 5,000 spectators, with 500 being seated. The terraces were covered on three sides and featured railings. Grundy Hill's pitch famously sloped both downwards and also side-to-side, and was reputed to have its own

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. "Grundy Hill sloped from top diagonal to bottom diagonal and had the contours of corrugated iron, but until the new footballing nanny state prohibited such extreme drops, the ground was Horwich's prime asset." One fan recalled that, as a boy, it was his impression "that the base of the corner flag was level with the top of the crossbar – on the same goal line." From the stands, fans had views over the field's slopes to the

Rivington Pike Rivington Pike is a hill on Winter Hill, part of the West Pennine Moors at Rivington, Chorley in Lancashire, England. The nearest towns are Adlington and Horwich. The land and building are owned and managed by Chorley Council. The Pike Tower ...

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1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson ...

, the football club sold Grundy Hill to a housing developer, and moved several miles south to Leigh's Hilton Park in time for the 1995-1996 season. The move also led to the club renaming itself Leigh RMI after its new home town, although the club would subsequently change its name to Leigh Genesis F.C. The University of Bolton stadium, the current home of the Bolton Wanderers, is located near Horwich, within sight of the old location of Grundy Hill. The stadium was subsequently leveled, and a residential housing development now sits on the former site of Grundy Hill.

References

Buildings and structures in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton Defunct football venues in England Leigh Genesis F.C. Sport in the Metropolitan Borough of Bolton Horwich {{England-sports-venue-stub