The Shay
The Shay is a multi-purpose sports stadium in Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. It is home to the FC Halifax Town association football club and the Halifax Panthers rugby league team.
The stadium is owned by the Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council, who formerly leased the stadium to the Shay Stadium Trust, a nonprofit organisation set up to preserve the ground as a sports stadium. The council agreed to sell the stadium to Huddersfield Giants owner and local businessman Ken Davy in March 2025, however the sale is yet to be completed.
The Shay lies on the south side of Halifax, about a quarter of a mile from the town centre. The four stands at the stadium include the North Stand, the East Stand, the South Stand and the Skircoat Stand. The North and South stands were built in the mid-1990s. The Skircoat Stand is the oldest stand in the stadium.
Etymology
'Shay' is derived from the old English word 'shaw', which means a small wood, thicket or grove. The two words are used interchangeably in ancient references to the property upon which the stadium was eventually constructed.History
Earliest sources
References to the name Shay have been traced as far back as 1462, when on 6 July of that year a wealthy local man named William Brodley recorded that upon his death, property belonging to him just west of Shaghe Lane should pass to his son, John Brodley. At the time of the third year of Henry VIII's reign, the Subsidy Roll had recorded William Brodley junior as being assessed on goods to the value of £20, and by 1545 the property was still in his possession.The Shay descended to William Brodley's daughter and heiress Grace Hely in 1580, and in turn to her husband John Booth in 1587. This was recorded in the Halifax Court Rolls as Booth becoming the owner of 'Shaw and Nether Shaw'. At about this time, conservation of water and the maintenance of its purity were matters of extreme importance, and in 1588 John Booth arranged for a small dam to be constructed within the Shay Estate so as to provide enough water for his needs. This supply was later diverted away from the Shaw Syke in 1602 and within two years Booth surrendered ownership of 'Over and Nether Shaw' to the use of Simon Bynnes of Broadbottom.
John Caygil
John Caygill financed the construction of the Shay mansion and two other landmarks in Halifax. The first of these was the building of houses on a piece of land known as the Square. Construction was finished around 1758. Designed by John Carr of York. In 1923, the Halifax Corporation purchased the land and the buildings were demolished in 1959.Caygill provided the land and £840 for the construction of the Piece Hall, a monument which still stands today as a tourist attraction.
Ibbetson Family
John Caygill junior's only child, the aforementioned 'Jenny', became sole heiress to her father's estates, including the Shay. She would marry Sir James Ibbetson, Baronet of Leeds and Denton on 8 February 1768, and thus the ownership of the Shay Estate passed into the Ibbetson family. It is clear that the Ibbetson family did not live at the Shay - they did not need to, and so in the Halifax Journal of 18 April 1807, the mansion built by John Caygill was advertised for letting. The same advertisement in the Halifax Journal also gave details of the mansion itself. On the ground floor was a dining room and high, breakfast room, and parlour, housekeeper's room, butler's pantry, servants' hall, a large kitchen and gallery 'fitted with every modern improvement for cooking on the steam principle', a spacious passage wide and long, an elegant staircase with a double flight of stone steps. There was a landing wide and a spacious gallery on the second floor, while the drawing room and the five 'lodging rooms' with dressing rooms adjoining, were on the same scale as the rooms below. The doors were of solid mahogany.The addresses given to all the houses on the Shay Estate in the census returns. The Shay mansion's address is down as 'The Shay, Caygill's Walk' in two reports whilst addresses for the other houses are termed variably as the Shay, Shay Stable Yard, Shay Yard, Caygill's Walk and Shay Farm, though there is no doubt that they all refer to the same appropriate buildings, and are not new or separate ones. From the 1840s until 1903, there were six owners of the Shay Estate. William Boocock was the Shay mansion's last owner, though he only lived there for a few years up to 1903. By this time the Shay Estate was in the hands of the Halifax Corporation, and with the completion of the new Skircoat Road, the future of the Shay must have looked very much in doubt.
Redevelopment of the Shay Estate
Up until 1890 any traffic heading in the direction of Huddersfield travelled along the main route which ran from the town centre along the bottom of the Shay, up Shaw Hill to Huddersfield Road. It was the idea of John Booth to develop Caygill's Walk, which ran along the top of the Shay, into what is now Skircoat Road. At the time his scheme came under heavy criticism from local people. This dramatic period in the Shay's history continued when, two years later, on 29 August 1891, Skircoat Road was opened for traffic for the first time. In 1903, with the Shay mansion no longer being used for residential purposes, the Corporation saw fit to demolish it.From the time of the demolition of the mansion, what was left of the Shay Estate became the object of many schemes. On 9 November 1898, it was announced that a proposal had been put forward to run goods trains to the Shay Estate and build a goods depot there. On 31 May 1902 an agreement was made by the Midland Rail Company for the purchase of the estate, the company having sought powers to construct a loop line at Low Moor railway station and to run a part of the Lancashire and Yorkshire line to Halifax. However, shortly after this, "owing to the present position of railways and the condition of the money market", there was no reasonable prospect of the proposed railway being constructed in the immediate future, and all plans were abandoned.
Work had actually been started on a tunnel to run under the newly constructed Skircoat Road, on the Well Head side of the road, and this tunnel is still in evidence today. The only purpose for which it was intended for use after this was as one of many air raid shelters in Halifax during the Second World War. Between 1908 and 1910 it was proposed to build a slaughterhouse on the Shay.
During the First World War the Shay was used by the local Territorial Army to practice trench digging. About 1920, rumours started to circulate that the Shay could be transformed into a football ground. Even then, there was some criticism of the idea, but the board of Halifax Town made an official approach to the Shay's owners, the Corporation, and it was accepted.
Football ground
At a public meeting on 9 July 1920, the then Halifax Town chairman Dr A.H. Muir stated: "Speaking from inside information I know that if, in February 1921, we can produce a ground that will meet league requirements, and if we can show financial backing that is worthy of a town this size, our position as members of the English League with all that means, is absolutely secure."In that same speech Dr. Muir announced that the Town directors were to meet members of the Corporation's Improvements Committee with a view to the leasing of the Shay, so that they could prepare it in time for the 1921-22 season. Halifax Town, formed in 1911, had earlier played at Sandhall Lane and then Exley - an unsuitable venue. On Wednesday 4 August 1920, a recommendation was put to the committee which was passed and the Halifax Courier set up a fund to help get the Shay ready. Timber was delivered to the Shay for work to begin on Saturday 16 October 1920.
An appeal was made in the Halifax Courier that night for people to help on the following Monday. Fans, players and directors worked together to get the ground ready, and on 7 December the first grass sods were laid on the playing pitch.
In March 1921, Halifax Town were elected to the Football League, and along with clubs such as Accrington Stanley, Ashington, Durham City and Nelson, became founder members of the newly formed Division Three North. Association football arrived at the Shay on 3 September 1921 when Halifax Town, in front of 10,000 spectators, defeated Darlington F.C. side 5–0.
The record attendance for the Shay was 36,885 on 14 February 1953 in the 5th round of the FA Cup against Tottenham Hotspur. Though the Shay could once hold 40,000, the capacity put on the Shay has reduced since the early 1970s: in 1970 it was 38,000, 1972 it was 25,000, 1977 it was 23,000, 1979 it was 16,500.
The capacity stood at 16,500 until 1985, at which time the Popplewell Report into ground safety was released following the Bradford City stadium fire in May of that year. All standing areas at the Shay were closed, and for a time, while it remained seating only, the new capacity was set at 1,777. Safety work was subsequently carried out and the capacity raised to 3,600. When Halifax Town were paired up with Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup in January 1988, in an effort to keep the tie at the Shay, more work was carried out and the capacity was raised further to 4,021. A little over four thousand people attended said Forest game. When the council took over the Shay in 1987 it became part of Calderdale Leisure Services and in July 1988 new plans were announced for the ground. A new stand was purchased from Scunthorpe United and other major ground improvements were being made.
Financial troubles
On 27 October 1986, then chairman John Madeley announced that the club was close to collapse. Many people looked to the Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council to help save the club as it still owned the lease on the ground and any plans for the Shay from private companies would have to be given the council's go-ahead. However, on 17 November it rejected two plans to save the club. One proposal was from a London property firm wanting to build shops on the Shay. The other, involving the development of a sports complex, including a ground for the club, was turned down because of difficulties over the conditions demanded by the Edinburgh property firm behind the move. These 'difficulties' concerned the lease of the Shay. With the council unwilling to part with the lease, the Edinburgh firm pulled out of its bid to save the club. On 26 November, the Inland Revenue gave Halifax Town just six days to come up with proposals for paying the £76,000 tax debt.The situation became so serious that Halifax Town manager Mick Jones resigned for a more secure position at Peterborough United. On 23 December, John Madeley announced he had signed an agreement with a property company which, he said, would safeguard football at the Shay until the end of the season. They were prepared to put money into the club, but wanted to move it out of the Shay so they could develop it after the season's close.
In February 1987, it came to light that this property company was a local firm, Marshall Construction of Elland. They wanted to build a superstore for Gateway Foodmarkets on the Shay. On 4 March 1987, councillor Geoffrey Butler put forward a plan to split the Shay - one half as a football ground with the other to be developed. The scheme seemed exciting but like the plans of Marshall's and others, it was rejected by the council. Marshall's offered to build Halifax Town a 4,500 capacity stadium next to the nearby North Bridge Leisure Centre, though they still wanted to build a superstore on the Shay. On 18 March, the new plan was also rejected.