A life long West Ham Utd supporter, now middle-aged, made an enquiry for a model of the main stand at the Boleyn Ground. At this time the Club had announced they were leaving this famous stadium and moving to the new London Olympic Stadium. Originally the enquiry was for the old west stand that he watched from with his father. This would have made a great piece, but after we met and spoke it was decided maybe the new “Alpari Stand’ would be more fitting for his generation.

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Brief History

In 2001, the old West stand was replaced by a 15,000 seat, two-tier stand named the “Dr Martins Stand”, and in 2013 renamed the “Alpari Stand”.The Stand incorporated executive boxes on two levels as well as the West Ham United Hotel.

The Model

The brief for this commission was to re-create the stand as it stood at the time in 2014. The project took an estimated 240 man hours to research and create. As you can see from the model, the building is joined to both the North and South Stands behind each goal, so I decided the model had to incorporate both corners attached these ends to make sense to the eye. A section of pitch was added to give perspective. There are buildings and a car park behind this stand which are not included in the model to a workable size, but could be incorporated at a later time.

The model does includes all the feature of this stand at the time, such as the “Bobby Moore” and “Trevor Brooking” images on both vertical trusses at each end and the two castle turrets outside. I decided to paint the seats the original colour as the they had faded quite badly and looked more red than the distinctive claret colour.

The roof was quite a challenge with its shape, and the angled trusses. These are all hand made and are a distinctive feature of this model.

Summary

This was a tricky piece to create, lots of angles and features to get correct. Spent quite a lot time looking and studying the architectural design. I would like to thank the club for there friendly co-operation during this commission.

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