The Savage Ecstasy Of The Nest

Prior to the construction of the ground heralded as ‘The Eighth Wonder of the World’, Norwich City played at the eclectic, ramshackle home: The Nest. The ground, nestled in a disused chalk pit on Rosary Road, had been the venue for home matches since 1908.

Within the maze-like terraces of this stadium, we can trace the primordial elements of the fan culture of later decades. There was the vast popular end named the ‘Spion Kop’ like so many of its Edwardian counterparts. It was a hulking beast of a terrace, a sheer cliff face of concrete rising thirty feet towards the Norfolk sky, where supporters peered down from the precipice onto the corner flag below.

Walter Powell, writing in a 1954 Eastern Daily Press column, would wistfully recall the experience of standing on the Spion Kop after the First World War:

“Where are all those who have stood aloft upon the precipitous slopes of ‘Spion Kop’ and beat their breasts in savage ecstasy? Not all are gone, those old familiar faces.

“Yet my first visit was by no means a happy one…I wandered about miserably behind a forest of grown-up legs until a kindly spectator, noticing my plight, stood aside and urged me to push my way to the front. But I lacked experience and therefore knowledge of the necessary elbowing technique. I had no very clear idea where the front was except that it was downhill and that the whole world was roaring and laughing and groaning and gesticulating between it and me.

“Nothing, of course, could have been calculated to achieve better results. Almost instantly a grimy, bristly visage under a railwayman’s peaked cap was breathing with beery but kindly intimacy at me: ‘Wussama’er sonny? Can’tcher see?’ My interlocutor straightened up and I heard him bellow: “George! Pass this youngester down!” 

“Then, before I realised terrifying the import of these words, I was swept off my feet, whirled high into the air and propelled from one pair of clutching hands to another. I was aware of a kaleidoscope of sky, green turf, and a vast sea of upturned faces; a concrete chasm yawned sickeningly — and then I was deposited gently on an iron bar with a large protective arm around me and a view of the proceedings equalled only by that obtained from the directors’ box.”

Such a visceral experience appears to have had a profound effect upon Powell, writing more than 20 years after the Nest was abandoned. He portrays the crowd as an intoxicating, all-encompassing mass of noise and visual spectacle, with the whole experience heightened by the steep, raking architecture of the Spion Kop itself. “The savage ecstasy” he discusses suggests an allure that would define the shape of English fan culture in the decades to come. A popular terrace was an experience that stimulated multiple senses, it could be loud, colourful, frightening and exciting, as a tightly packed mass of bodies moved as an amorphous whole. 

This account also offers an insight into the people who attended The Nest in this era. Given the length of time between this experience and Powell’s recollections, we cannot take as  a completely reliable description of an individual with total certainty. However his choice to emphasise the kindly supporter’s railwayman’s cap and ‘beery’ breath means that he can perhaps be taken as a representative ‘everyman’ supporter. He suggests that the Nest was full of manual labourers, with a firm sense of community and social responsibility, who are as defined by their work as they are by their leisure. Such a description is consistent with the wider footballing audience of the time; the majority of the crowd at inter-war football matches would have been skilled workers, whose interest in the game was fostered through a variety of means, including their own playing experiences, a sense of community and local pride.

Powell would find himself drawn back time and time again, and he soon found a profound sense of belonging and ownership of the terracing he inhabited. Within his column he describes the atmosphere, routines and camaraderie that existed at the Nest: 

“Indeed, I soon became a ‘regular’ enamoured of my own particular square foot of terracing, on nodding terms with the other ‘fair-and-foul-weather’ supporters, able to comment suitably on the referee’s shortcomings and delighting in the activities of the many ‘characters’, such as the leather- lunged, brass-larynxed gentleman whose trumpet-blast: ‘Up the Lily-White!’ could be heard quite plainly all over the ground. How infantile such behaviour must seem to the superior and to uninitiated! How degraded manifestations of the depths to which the lowest common denominator of mob-conduct can sink! Little do such critics realise that every primitive yell represents a lessening of the tension and an outlet of frustration endemic in twentieth-century urban society. I do not wish over state my case, but when Norwich beat Coventry by ten goals to two it is possible that for every goal scored a wife was spared a beating’

Such parallels between football and urban society, especially in relation to those supporters who populated the terraces, were a frequent topic of popular debate 20th-Century Britain. There was a belief going back to the Victorian era, particularly among the middle classes, that working people were easily influenced and susceptible to moral corruption, something that often had little grounds in reality. In fact, working class people frequently self-policed behaviour such as drunkenness and violence, with work providing all the masculine assurance people needed. In spite of this, many believed that sport held an important influence over Britain’s working population, with the degradation of society through the prevalence of gambling, alcohol and aggression being a popular topic in the discourses of the time.

With this in mind, when Powell alludes to the avoidance of domestic violence as a result of Norwich’s record 10-2 victory against Coventry, he identifies the inhabitants of Norwich’s popular terracing (of which he admits to being a part) as working class men with an assumed predisposition to violence. It is important to note that he was writing in 1954, well before the British press became enamoured with the notion of ‘the hooligan’. Powell also makes clear his belief that this pre-disposition was awakened by the ‘mob-conduct’ of the terraces, where such partisan support that can be construed as ‘infantile’, ‘primitive’ and ‘degraded’. We cannot know for sure how accurately this account reflects the lived experience of the Spion Kop, but it does paint a picture of how a recognisable, rather negative, perception of vocal supporters developed. 

In spite of the negative light cast by Powell’s recollections, he also recognised that some supporters become particularly noteworthy for their dedication to the club, and that a camaraderie emerged between these ‘fair-and-foul-weather’ fans. Importantly, Powell appears to have identified these fans with the area surrounding his typical place on the terrace, and felt a distinct belonging to this area. The notion that certain individuals, like Powell, identified both themselves and each other as a distinct group within the wider fan base, and located themselves within a particular part of the ground, would prove to be an important ingredient in the development of a recognisable end. When the club left the Nest for their new home at Carrow Road, we can speculate that these people would likely have all stood together in the new ground and therefore begun to mark out where the spiritual successor to the Spion Kop would be.  

It is worth noting that the Spion Kop was not the only part of the Nest from which modern stands like the Barclay and Snake pit can trace their heritage. Just over from this concrete monolith was the Chicken Run, a curved terrace notorious for its vocal, partisan support. This section of the ground was vividly described by Aubrey Watkins in his introduction to Ted Ball’s Illustrated History of Norwich City:

“We were certainly never allowed to go in the Chicken Run, a well sighted area opposite the Stand for here the most vociferous and vocal supporters gathered. They were within spitting distance of the players and the referee and they gave their uncensored and unrestricted opinions to both at the closest possible range. It took a brave referee to give an unpopular decision within a few yards of the Chicken Run.”

Like Powell, Watkins identifies certain areas of the ground as hotbeds of tribalism. His account also indicates that the areas where these types of fans stood were widely recognised throughout the fan base, and that those who chose to enter them were deemed to be of a particular character. In this case, the Chicken Run was a restricted space, where those deemed too young could be barred from entry.  

Yet there was also a sense of community borne of shared experience. This was most clearly felt during the singing of On the Ball City, in which the whole ground could share. Singing was collective and harmonious throughout the ground, focusing primarily on support of the team. As Powell describes:

“It is the epitome of all that is harmlessly cussed, tenacious and loyal in the Norfolk- man’s make-up. Only a veteran fan can possibly know the requirements for a truly soul-satisfying rendering, but the singing of the eighteen words of the chorus should not occupy less time than it would take a dejected Arsenal supporter to hasten from Highbury Stadium to the nearest Tube station on a raw, wintry day.” 

It is here we see the greatest difference between the Nest and Carrow Road in later decades. Singing here was universal, but would later come to be focused on certain areas of the ground, and would gradually grow into more of a chant. ACN’s own Andrew Lawn has charted this evolution from Victorian music hall singing in support of the team, to an altogether more vitriolic form of singing, including chants that glorify the singers whilst vilifying any perceived outsiders. We can see evidence of both of these elements here. Partisan support existed, but not at the expense of a cordial atmosphere or all-encompassing song. The balance would shift in future decades. These differences are noted by Powell, as he takes great care to note the musicality of the song at this time, clearly drawing a comparison to the changes that had been wrought even by the 1950s. In much the same way, Matthew Rowell explains in his excellent article on The Nest that it had a great feeling of camaraderie and friendliness, with many of those who experienced it attesting that Carrow Road never truly compared.

Even at this comparatively early stage in Norwich City’s history, the features that would go on to encapsulate the terrace culture of later decades had emerged. This includes a set of behaviour rules outside of everyday norms, typified by vocal, partisan support, as well as a distinct sense of camaraderie. It is also worth remembering that as both Powell and Watson were recalling the Nest in the 1950s and 1970s respectively, that their memories of these earlier terraces were being coloured by their experiences of football support at the time they were writing. Perhaps these features only present themselves to us through the memories of those who were there, like Powell and Watson, because they themselves wanted to find them? 

Sources: 

Aubrey Aitkin, ‘The Canaries as I have Known Them: An Introduction’ in Ted Bell, On the Ball City: An Illustrated History of Norwich City Football Club’ (Norwich, 1972), 5-9.

Tony Collins and Wray Vamplew, Mud Sweat and Beers (Oxford, 2002).

Pamela Dixon and Neal Garnham, ‘Drink and the Professional Footballer in 1890s England and Ireland’, Sport in History 25:3 (2005), 375-389.

Judy Giles, ‘“Playing Hard to Get”: Working‐Class Women, Sexuality and Respectability in Britain, 1918‐40’, Women’s History Review 2:1 (1992), 239-255. 

Richard Holt, Sport and The British: A Modern History (Oxford, 1989).

Andrew Lawn, We Loose Every Week (Kings Lynn, 2020). 

Walter Powell, ‘A Norfolk Miscellany: The Deserted Nest’, Eastern Daily Press, 26 November 1954, 6, Local Recall. [Online Source] https://www.localrecall.co.uk/search/3189801 (Accessed 4 April 2022).

Matthew Rodwell, ‘Gone Grounds: The Nest’, Read the League, 22 December 2017. [Online Source] https://readtheleague.com/the-big-feature/thenest (Accessed 4 April 2022).

Helen Smith, ‘Essay: Gender and the North’, Show Studio, 8 February 2016. [Online Source] https://showstudio.com/projects/north/essay_gender_and_the_north, Accessed 26 April 2022

George Orwell, ‘The Sporting Spirit’, Tribune, 14 December 1945. [Online Source] https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-sporting-spirit/, Accessed 26 April 2022