Arden Garages Stadium

The ground sits at the end of Knights Lane in Tiddington. What marks the place is not its size—1,400 seats on one side, a modest terrace on the other—but the way it arrived.

The money came from the Football Foundation and the local council, a rare combination that allowed the club to move in for the 2007–08 season with a modern seated stand and floodlights. The club, Stratford Town F.C., had a new home and a new fixture list.

The name of the ground has changed more often than the players. It opened as The DCS Stadium, switched to the Moodchimp Stadium for a single season, and settled on the Arden Garages title in 2018. The sponsor changes are a quiet record of the club’s life in the lower reaches of English football. The surface is natural grass, kept flat and green by the local groundstaff, and the stadium is shared with FC Stratford.

The only time the gates truly opened was for a cup game against Shrewsbury Town. The club allowed 2,800 fans inside for that FA Cup First Round tie, a temporary arrangement that saw the visitors win 1–5. The crowd went home, the capacity was reduced again, and the ground returned to its usual rhythm.