Ochilview Park

Ochilview Park is a football stadium in Stenhousemuir in the Falkirk council area of Scotland. It is the home ground of Scottish League Two club Stenhousemuir, and is also currently shared by Scottish Championship club Queen's Park and East of Scotland Football League Second Division club Syngenta. The stadium has a capacity of 3,746 with 626 seated.

Occhiview was opened in 1890 and has been the home of Stenhousemuir since then. It has also temporarily hosted home games of other nearby clubs including Stirling Albion, Falkirk and East Stirlingshire. The record attendance of 12,525 was set during a Scottish Cup quarter final match between Stenhousemuir and East Fife on 11 March 1950.

History

Stenhousemuir F.C. was founded in 1884 following the breakaway from a local team called Heather Rangers. The club played at two other grounds, Tryst Park and Goschen Park, before moving to Ochilview in 1890. The name Ochilview derives from the nearby Ochil Hills which are visible from the stadium. In 1928 a new main stand was constructed with bench seating for 310 spectators. It was built to replace the previous stand which was gutted by a fire on 2 April that year. Club folklore has it that during the build it was discovered late into the project that the architect had omitted plans for access to the seating area which had to be quickly rectified; two external staircases were added later.

Ochilview Park recorded its largest official attendance on 11 March 1950, when 12,525 spectators attended the club's Scottish Cup quarter-final tie against East Fife. A year later, Ochilview wrote itself into Scottish football history when it was the venue of the first ever floodlit match in Scotland, during a friendly against Hibernian on 7 November 1951.

In 1994, Stenhousemuir were considering relocation, having provisionally agreed to sell Ochilview to the Safeways supermarket chain for £2.