Telford Street Park was a

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...

ground in

Inverness Inverness (; from the gd, Inbhir Nis , meaning "Mouth of the River Ness"; sco, Innerness) is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for The Highland Council and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands. Histori ...

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the ...

. It was the home ground of Caledonian F.C. and latterly Caledonian Thistle F.C.

History

Caledonian played at the

eponymous An eponym is a person, a place, or a thing after whom or which someone or something is, or is believed to be, named. The adjectives which are derived from the word eponym include ''eponymous'' and ''eponymic''. Usage of the word The term ''epon ...

Caledonian Park until the mid-1920s, when Telford Street Park was built. A fire destroyed the original stand in 1950, and a new one was built. A merger between the three Inverness clubs (Caledonian,

Clachnacuddin Clachnacuddin Football Club is a part-time, senior Scottish football club based in the city of Inverness, that currently plays in the Highland Football League. Clachnacuddin have won the most Highland Football League championships in the com ...

and

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), who all played in the

Highland Football League The Scottish Highland Football League (SHFL, commonly known as the Highland League) is a senior football league based in the north of Scotland. The league sits at level 5 on the Scottish football league system The Scottish football league syst ...

, had long been mooted. The proposal gained momentum in 1993, when the

Scottish Football League The Scottish Football League (SFL) was a league featuring professional and semi-professional football clubs mostly from Scotland.One club, Berwick Rangers, is based in the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is located approximately 4 km south ...

(SFL) announced it would expand its membership by two clubs and would look more favourably on a joint Inverness bid than if each individual club applied. At the same time, Caledonian had received an offer of £750,000 from

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for Telford Street Park. The club wanted to replace their ground with a new all-seater stadium that would require government funding, but the authorities indicated their preference for a facility to be used by a merged club. Despite clear opposition from most of the supporters, the directors of Caledonian and Thistle pressed ahead with a merger proposal. The new club, which was initially called Caledonian Thistle, gained SFL membership in 1994 and played its home games at Telford Street Park. As part of its SFL membership bid, Caledonian Thistle had pledged to find a new ground by August 1995. The league granted an extension to August 1996, as the proposed new site required £900,000 of funding from Inverness District Council. The club threatened to resign from the SFL if the funding was not provided, but it was authorised by a 14-12 majority in December 1995. The new

Caledonian Stadium Caledonian Stadium is a football ground in the Longman area of Inverness, Scotland, near the banks of the Moray Firth. It hosts home matches of Scottish Professional Football League club Inverness Caledonian Thistle. History Inverness Caledon ...

was opened in 1996 and Telford Street Park was demolished to make way for a retail park.

References

; Sources * Sports venues completed in 1926 Defunct football venues in Scotland Inverness Caledonian Thistle F.C. Sports venues in Inverness Scottish Football League venues Sports venues demolished in 1996 Demolished sports venues in the United Kingdom 1926 establishments in Scotland 1996 disestablishments in Scotland Caledonian F.C. {{Scotland-sports-venue-stub