Has some deranged, lunatic supporter painted the front of their house in honour of a football team?
No. This is the old entrance to the Upper West Stand of Arsenal’s hallowed Highbury ground.
On a match day, thousands of supporters would march across what should have been someone’s lounge and dining room through the kitchen door (turnstiles), down the garden path and into the bowels of the magnificent art-deco West Stand.
Eccentric, weird and wonderful.
The stairwells and corridors behind the stand’s façade were something between a scene from an Orwellian novel and an admiralty bunker.
Dull yellow lighting, tiled walls and Gill Sans’ signage lead you to the relevant staircase and block. A long bar on one side of the main thoroughfare disgorged cold, fizzy, weak beer which, after consumption, soon ended up in trough urinals on the opposite side of the corridor.
However, when the hour hand on the big clock neared 3 pm and a supporter mounted the last staircase to emerge, once more, into the light of day, the view of the ground, the marching band, the North Bank, the Clock End, the Victorian roof tops, the distant trains rumbling north out of Kings Cross towards the North…WOW.
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