Construction and early years After foundation in April 1898,
The Portsmouth Football and Athletic Company bought a plot of land near Goldsmith Avenue,
Milton to be used primarily for football and "for such outdoor games and exercises that were approved by the directors." It was a four-and-a-half-acre plot of
market garden land, bought from the Goldsmith family who owned Milton Farm The site was shortly to be turfed and fenced and it was hoped that football matches could be played there after Christmas of 1898. However, the land was still covered with a crop of potatoes which the directors were "anxious to sell", which they eventually did, adding to the funds of the newly formed company. On 19 December 1898, the
Hampshire Telegraph newspaper ran an advertisement inviting tenders "for the building of two stands: the first, 100 feet long with seven rows of seats on the south side and the second, terracing which stretched for 240 feet on the opposite, north side". Ironically, later in May 1912 Portsmouth's town council bought the remaining Milton Farm land and opened a public recreation park named
Milton Park, only 127 metres east of Fratton Park on Priory Crescent. Construction was finished by early 1900, with the ground featuring turnstiles, dressing rooms, and committee rooms. At this time the stadium was considered as one finest in the country south of London. It was attended by 4,141 people with gate receipts of 141 pounds, 14 shillings and 9 pence (). On 2 March 1903 Fratton Park has hosted its only
England international match, a 2–1 win against
Wales. In 1905, the stadium received significant upgrades. Club director
Sir John Brickwood gifted the stadium a facelift, adding a clock tower, balcony, and mock-Tudor pavilion, the latter of which the is still retained in design. It is likely that this series of renovations connected the northern terrace to the east, forming the
'Milton Corner' or later
'The Boilermakers Hump'. The west end also received an upgrade in 1915 to accommodate 8,000 standing supporters under a roof, but with no exterior wall to allow coastal winds to dry the pitch. On 6 June 1918, an American army team played a Canadian army team in a baseball match at Fratton Park, with the gate money donated to the British Red Cross. The US army team won 4–3. By 1925, the South Stand was becoming overcrowded, and the club commissioned
Archibald Leitch for a new design. Construction began on 17 June 1925 and was completed just ten weeks later at a cost of £20,000 (). The new stand featured seats and benches in the upper section and a standing 'paddock' underneath, below pitch level. It also contained new dressing rooms moved from the Fratton Park pavilion with a "tunnel" leading to the pitch, and removed or absorbed much of the original mock-Tudor design from 1905. As the new South Stand was much larger than the original, the Fratton Park pitch was reduced in width from 77 to 73 yards. On 29 August 1925 Football League President
John McKenna officially opened the stand before just before a home game against Middlesbrough.
Southampton F.C. were briefly forced to switch home matches to Fratton Park during
World War II when a German Luftwaffe bomb was dropped and hit their home at
The Dell, Southampton in November 1940, leaving an 18-foot wide crater on the pitch which damaged an underground water culvert, flooding the pitch.
Capacity reduction and further additions After the
Burnden Park disaster of 1946, Fratton Park's capacity was reduced from 58,000 to 52,000 for safety reasons. In 1951, 4,226 seats were fitted onto the upper standing terrace tier of the North Stand. These seats were initially disliked by some of the stand's displaced supporters, blaming the North Stand's reduced standing capacity and also an increase in ticket price to the seated section. However, the revenue earned from the new seats was reinvested back into Fratton Park as in 1956, a new license was obtained to rebuild and increase the Fratton End to a standing capacity of 5000. On 26 July 1948, Fratton Park hosted a Netherlands vs Ireland first-round football game in the
1948 London Olympics, one of only two grounds outside London to host matches in the Olympic football tournament. The game at Fratton Park was attended by a crowd of 8,000, with a 3–1 win to the Netherlands. In summer 1956, the club built a new Fratton End stand, demolishing the original Railway End. A new stand was built before the new season using a new prefabricated concrete and steel method, one of the first of its kind. The newly-named 'Fratton End' stand was opened on 25 August 1956 before the first home game of the season by Sir Lesley Bowker, the vice-chairman of
The Football Association. This rebuild would later suffer structural issues in 1986, when it was found the concrete aggregate from
The Solent used contained high levels of sea salt and had caused the upper tiers' steel structure to corrode and weaken. Consequently the upper tier was closed until 1988, when it was demolished. In 1974, Fratton Park became the first football stadium in England to dig deep "moat" trenches to prevent
pitch invasions on recommendation by the Minister of Sport and Recreation
Denis Howell. The 1980s saw a number of alterations, including perimeter fences in 1983 for pitch invasions (later removed following the
Hillsborough Disaster), safety upgrades in 1985 after the
Bradford City stadium fire (including additional fire escape staircases and enclosing flammable sections of the stands) and refurbishment of the South and North stands in 1988, along with the demolition of the unsafe upper tier at the Fratton End which was not restored until 1997. On 12 March 1983, Cardiff City fans climbed the scoreboard at the back of the Milton End terrace and stole the hands from the Milton End clock. Both teams were chasing promotion to Division One at the time - Portsmouth were eventually crowned champions with Cardiff runners-up. In 1989, one of Portsmouth's crossbars was found to be one inch too low by a match referee and was readjusted to ensure fair play.
Conversion to all-seater and a new Fratton End In the summer of 1996, Fratton Park became an all-seater stadium to meet the
Taylor Report standards, but the seats in the Fratton End would only last a year. In 1997, the Fratton End was demolished entirely and rebuilt. Planning permission had already been granted four times in the previous nine years (1988, 1991, 1995, and 1996) but work was delayed primarily due to
relegation to Division Two in 1988, which many fans theorise was connected to the partial closure of Fratton End in 1988. The stand, designed by
KSS (who also planned the 1996 design), was single-tiered with 4,500 seats and no corporate boxes which was cheaper than previous plans. A portrait of club legend
Jimmy Dickinson was designed into the southern wing seating, whilst a roof extension was also added to the North Stand at the same time. It was opened without ceremony on 31 October 1997 at 4.59pm, with one minute to spare before a 5pm opening clearance deadline. Problems with some misoriented floodlights caused the Fratton End of the pitch to be ''"shrouded in gloom on Hallowe'en"'', according to the Sky Sports 3 TV commentator, causing some doubt on whether the live evening televised Division One game against
Swindon Town would take place. Initially, the new stand was officially known as 'The KJC Stand' under a sponsorship agreement with the mobile telephone retailer
KJC Mobile Phones Limited. On 4 April 1998, the new Fratton End received a formal opening ceremony in Portsmouth F.C.'s 100th Anniversary Year celebrations in a league match against
Birmingham City, one day before the official 100-year club anniversary on 5 April. The match ended 1–1 with an attendance of 14,591 supporters. In 2007, under the new ownership of
Alexandre Gaydamak, further renovations occurred. Three rows of seating were controversially retrofitted to the top of the South Stand, concealing
Archibald Leitch's original 'X' trusses that were a notable feature of the original design. On 16 July 2012, Fratton Park acted as the start location of Day 59 of the seventy day long
London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay. The Day 59 relay route began with veteran Portsmouth F.C. steward John Jenkins as runner number
001, who then carried the
Olympic flame onto and around the Fratton Park pitch. The Day 59 route was Portsmouth to Brighton & Hove. In the summer of 2015 the pitch was relaid as a perfect rectangle - from 1899 and 1997 it was a parallelogram, after which it was trapezoidal following the Fratton End rebuild. On 17 December 2016,
The Pompey Supporters Trust unveiled the 'Wall Of Fame' plaques to the rear wall of the North Stand, featuring the names of all the 2300 PST shareholders who helped save Portsmouth FC from liquidation by the
High Court Of Justice on 10 April 2013. In summer 2018, a large video screen was installed to the roof line of the Milton End. In 2019, the South Stand underwent major improvements. Work included new exterior cladding, a new roof, new guttering, new lighting (including emergency lighting), replacing internal structural steelwork, and a larger camera gantry. Work was completed in time for the first fixture of the
2019–20 season against
Birmingham City. This was the first evening game played without any light from Fratton Park's iconic four corner floodlight pylon towers since their erection in 1962.
2020s development and regeneration On 14 January 2020 the club announced "Phase 1" of the Fratton Park Stadium Regeneration & Development Plan, a multi-year phased plan to modernise the ground. In April 2020 'substantial' and 'essential works' to the North Stand began, involving addition of translucent roof panels and replacement of the roof, external cladding and beams which was completed in September. In June 2021, work started on the stadium's first major change since 1997. Firstly, the North Stand's seats from 1996 were removed and replaced, adding 600 additional seats and extra wheelchair spaces, completed in May 2022. From April to July 2022, the South Stand was converted into a single continuous tier, once again revealing Archibald Leitch "X" truss design on the upper tier which had been covered since 1985. These works reduced the South Stand capacity by 450 seats which was offset by an increase in the North Stand, and exposed Lower South Stand seats to rain which were not covered in the original design. On 2 November 2022, Portsmouth F.C. announced that a third phase of Fratton Park refurbishment works had begun in the Milton End to increase its capacity. Later on in August 2023, Fratton End had additional
safe standing added. During the 2024 summer break, new television gantries were added to the Fratton and South stands, completed in August. ==Structure and facilities==