Craven Cottage: Home of Fulham FC and Football History
Craven Cottage, the iconic football stadium in Fulham, London, that has been the home of Fulham Football Club since 1896. Also known as Fulham’s Riverside Ground, it’s one of the oldest professional football grounds in England still in use today. Unlike modern arenas built for spectacle, Craven Cottage feels like stepping into football’s past—wooden benches, the old Johnny Haynes Stand, and the famous Riverside Terrace where fans have stood for generations. It’s not the biggest or flashiest, but it’s one of the most authentic.
What makes Craven Cottage stand out isn’t just its age, but how it fits into the rhythm of London life. It sits right on the banks of the River Thames, with views of the water and the distant skyline. The famous Craven Cottage Cottage itself—a small brick building near the pitch—is one of the last remaining examples of a stadium built around an actual cottage, now used as a media room. It’s a place where legends like Johnny Haynes, Bobby Moore, and more recently, Mohamed Salah (on loan from Chelsea in 2015) have played. The pitch is smaller than most top-flight grounds, the stands are close, and the noise carries differently here. You don’t just watch a game at Craven Cottage—you feel it.
It’s also a place where football culture lives. The club’s history is stitched into every brick. The stands have names tied to legends: the Johnny Haynes Stand, the Bobby Moore Stand. Even the floodlights are old-school, casting long shadows over the pitch on winter nights. Fans still sing the same chants they’ve sung since the 1970s. It’s not about corporate suites or VIP lounges—it’s about loyalty, tradition, and the smell of damp grass after rain.
Craven Cottage has hosted more than just league matches. It’s seen European nights, FA Cup upsets, and even a few international friendlies. In 2002, it briefly became the temporary home of Arsenal while Highbury was being redeveloped. It’s hosted concerts, charity matches, and even a 1990s World Cup qualifying game for the England women’s team. It’s not just a stadium—it’s a living archive.
When you look at the posts here, you’ll see how Craven Cottage connects to bigger stories. There’s the match between Leinster and the Bulls at Croke Park, showing how rugby grounds carry their own weight in history. Then there’s Sevilla stunning Barcelona at the Ramón Sánchez Pizjuán, proving that iconic venues shape outcomes as much as players do. Craven Cottage is in that same league—not because of its size, but because of what it holds.
Below, you’ll find stories that link back to this place—not just Fulham’s own matches, but the wider world of football where tradition meets modern pressure. From postponed fixtures to last-minute goals, these posts show how a simple ground like Craven Cottage still matters in a game that’s changing fast.