There have been three Hampden Parks, all built by the amateurs of Queen’s Park and all on Glasgow’s south side; the name came from a terrace of houses honouring the English parliamentarian John Hampden. The first opened in 1873; the second, a few hundred yards away, later became Third Lanark’s Cathkin Park, whose ghostly terraces still stand in the trees; and in 1903 Queen’s Park opened the third — then the largest football stadium in the world, a title it held until Brazil built the Maracanã in 1950.
For the first half of the twentieth century Hampden held crowds no ground in Europe could match. Its records still stand: 149,415 inside (and thousands locked out) for Scotland against England in 1937 — the European attendance record to this day — and 146,433 for that season’s cup final. Out of those slopes came the Hampden Roar, the wall of sound first named after a late Scottish winner in 1929 and part of the national vocabulary ever since.
The ground’s guest list is the game’s history: every Scotland home fixture of consequence, almost every Scottish Cup final — including the riots of 1909 and 1980 recorded elsewhere in this section — and the European nights told on the European Finals page, above all the 1960 European Cup final that many still call the greatest match ever played. Away from football, Hampden has hosted everyone from boxing bills to the Rolling Stones, and in 2014 — with a temporary deck raised over the pitch — the athletics of the Commonwealth Games.
The great bowl was rebuilt in stages into the all-seated national stadium reopened in 1999, home also to the Scottish Football Museum and its treasures, including the oldest national trophy in world football, the Scottish Cup of 1873. In 2020 came the quiet end of an era: Queen’s Park, after 117 years as landlords of the national game, sold Hampden to the Scottish FA.
Sleeker and smaller now, it keeps its power. When Scotland score at a full Hampden, the Roar comes up out of the ground as it did for grandfathers on the old slopes — the sound, as much as the stadium, being the monument.