Picture the situation if you possibly can. The ambitious Leicester Fosse Football Club, formed just seven years earlier, had just taken the major step forward in gaining acceptance to the Midland League and was ready to battle for supremacy within Leicestershire against its fierce local rivals, Loughborough Town. The long term ambition was to gain a place in the recently formed Football League, which predominantly consisted of the leading Northern and Midland clubs throughout the country. Plans appeared to be right on track in the summer of 1891 when suddenly the thunderbolt struck! The Leicester Borough Council informed the club that they would not be renewing the lease on their Mill Lane enclosure as the land was required for development.

Suddenly homeless, it might have brought the club's short history to a dramatic early closure but for the foresight, as local legend has it, of a certain Miss Westland, the niece of Fosse committee man Joseph Johnson. Whilst walking down by the River Soar, by the town boundary, Miss Westland is believed to have remarked to her uncle that a patch of open land close to Walnut Street would make a suitable home for the Fosse. Johnson acted quickly to secure a lease for a three and three-quarter acre site and the club had a new home that would eventually last for 111 years.

In fact the timescale was such that the new enclosure would not be ready for use until October 1891, so Fosse actually started their season playing at the nearby Aylestone Road cricket ground, which had been kindly loaned to them by the cricket club.

This painting is believed to be the oldest illustration of Filbert Street, dating back to 1893

The initial enclosure looked very much like one of today's local soccer grounds, being little more than an enclosed field, with a strangely marked pitch, reflecting the early rules of association football. Entrance was gained from Filbert Street, though this was such a minor thoroughfare at the time that all posters referred to the venue as the Walnut Street Ground in order to help potential spectators to locate their destination more easily. A rudimentary Secretary's Office was constructed at the Filbert Street end to allow administrative matters to be dealt with on match days and the gate receipts to be counted. A refreshments hut was also quickly in situ as the world of commercialism was quick to attach itself to the new club.

The first ever fixture was actually staged on 17 October 1891 and was a reserve game. Fosse Rovers defeated Melton Swifts 3-2 with Melton's Paddy Slawson netting the first ever goal at the ground and Billy Davis claiming the honour of the first Fosse strike. 7 November saw the first team in action for the first time, in a friendly against the Nottingham Forest 'A' team (their reserves) which ended 1-1, with local idol of the time Jimmy Atter scoring for Fosse.

The viewing areas were banks of earth with some rudimentary wooden terracing inset, but they were sufficient to accommodate a record Midland League crowd of around 13,000 for the 1-1 draw with Loughborough Town in March 1893. The receipts of £254 went towards the cost of construction of the first proper stand at the ground that summer. The original Main Stand was built on the west side of the ground and held 1,400 spectators. It had bench seating with reserved areas for the committee, season ticket holders and the press. Physically it would have been located just in front of the current Carling Stand, as the pitch was ten yards further to the east than the present field.

The football that was witnessed by those early supporters was certainly in a different world to that of today. One Midland League fixture was abandoned after 50 minutes due to a snow storm, with Fosse goalkeeper Jimmy Thraves playing in an overcoat at the time. Another game, an FA Cup tie against Loughborough, was actually held up for 34 minutes whilst the Luffs defender, Jack Kent, had his broken leg set by the doctor whilst he lay on the pitch.

The addition of the new stand had certainly added prestige to the club and an application for election to the Football League was successful in 1894, elevating the Fosse to the recently formed Division Two. In those days, the east side of the ground tended to be referred to as the Aylestone Road side, whilst the south end was christened the Gasworks End locally. The Walnut Street Ground was now quite highly regarded within the footballing world and was chosen to stage a number of representative games in that era, including a Promotion/Relegation Test Match in 1895, and two Amateur Cup Finals. It also staged the odd novelty event, with perhaps the most unusual being a penalty shoot out featuring an elephant from a touring circus troup. By the turn of the century, the venue and area was so well established that the ground finally gained recognition as Filbert Street rather than Walnut Street.

Certainly the hordes had no difficulty in finding the venue in November 1899, when the gates were stormed for a league game against Sheffield Wednesday and the number inside the ground by kick-off time was estimated at 25,000, at least half of whom had not paid any entrance fee.

The wooden terracing at the southern end was replaced by a larger mound of earthwork banking in 1900 and this soon came to be known as the Spion Kop, after the hill battle site in the Boer War. That same year the first ever application for an alcohol licence for the ground was rejected by the local council.

1 December 1906 nearly went down in history as the day of the Filbert Street disaster. The crush barriers on the Popular (east) "smashed like matchwood" under the pressure of the crowd during the game against West Bromwich Albion. The injured were handed down over the heads of the sandwiched thousands and only the coolness of the fans prevented a panic. The official attendance that afternoon was 19,820.

Though the club suffered some difficult years immediately after the turn of the century, things were looking up by 1907 and thoughts of a promotion campaign were in the air. The Main Stand was extended that summer and the Kop was enlarged to bring the official capacity up to 22,000, a figure that is roughly equivalent to the modern day limit. With promotion achieved in 1908, a roof was erected over the Kop to bring the ground up to First Division standards.

Little changed from then until the end of the First World War as the club once more plunged into financial difficulties and was eventually reconstructed as Leicester City in 1919. But the following decade saw the most significant period of development as attendance and receipt records were broken with regularity.

A new Main Stand was built in 1921, sited just behind the original structure and leading to the pitch being moved over by ten yards, at a cost of £26,482. Even before the official opening, in November 1921, the ground was chosen to stage its first ever Amateur International. The occasion proved to be something of an anti-climax when thick fog caused a postponement, but the clash was restaged two days later.

Winston Churchill meets goalscoring legend Arthur Chandler and his City team-mates on December 1st 1923

The first ever attendance in excess of 30,000 witnessed an FA Cup tie against Fulham in 1922, whilst even the legendary Winston Churchill was tempted to visit Filbert Street for a game against South Shields in December 1923. With an appropriate sense of occasion, ace marksman Arthur Chandler chose that afternoon to net his first hat-trick for the club.

If the club's first ever promotion, in 1908, had been secured on their travels, the Second Division crown itself was well and truly clinched for the first time at Filbert Street on 2 May 1925 with a 4-0 thrashing of Stockport County. By now, the club had designs on establishing themselves in the elite and plans were laid for further development. In the summer of 1927, the roof over the Kop was dismantled and moved to the Filbert Street end and work commenced on the construction of the new Double Decker Stand. The cost was £31,000 and it produced a stand that was considered ahead of its time - so much so that it stood for 75 years with relatively little change. The seating, as with the Main Stand, was bench style in those days.

The new stand was officially opened in November 1927, increasing the ground capacity to a nominal 45,000 with the occasion being marked by the first ever live radio broadcast from Filbert Street. A month later all those ambitious plans might have crumbled when a fire broke out in the trainers room in the Main Stand, but fortunately it was discovered in time and only some kit was damaged.

What the new ground required, of course, was a fixture capable of testing the new capacity and the sporting public of Leicester did not have long to wait. In the Fifth Round of the FA Cup in February 1928, Tottenham Hotspur were drawn to visit the East Midlands. Interest in the tie was enormous and by the time the gates were closed the official headcount was put at a massive 47,298. Spectators spilled onto the running track around the pitch and several others found some truly unorthodox vantage points, including the roof of the Filbert Street end and even the girders of the Double Decker. One fan was even captured on camera trying to enter the ground by shinning down a telegraph wire. The only disappointment on the day was the result, with the visitors running out 3-0 winners.

Filbert Street had certainly put Leicester on the footballing map by this time and the ground was actually chosen to stage an FA Cup semi-final later that season. Blackburn Rovers defeated Arsenal 1-0 on that occasion, but the game was not nearly so dramatic as what took place the following October. That was the day that City ran up a record 10-0 victory over Portsmouth, with Arthur Chandler scoring six times and the legendary six swans flying over the pitch to mark the occasion.

Action from the 1930s in front of the East Stand side of Filbert Street

The thirties, in contrast, became rather more austere times. Continental opposition graced the ground for the first time in 1933, as the touring Rapid Vienna team handed out a lesson in cultured football, winning 3-1. A year later the club extended their lease on the ground for a further 14 years, but at a cost, with the annual rent more than doubling to £200. This meant that plans to build another Double Decker on the east side to mark the club's golden jubilee in 1934 had to be scrapped and, eventually, a cheaper scheme to add a roof over the Popular Side, as it was now called, was chosen. That project was not finally completed until 1939. Before then, Filbert Street had witnessed the clinching of the Second Division title for the second time, with a stylish 4-1 thumping of Tottenham Hotspur in May 1937. After the game the fans spilled onto the pitch in celebration with the 30 policemen on duty at the ground that day "powerless to prevent the outpouring of emotion".

Former England skipper Billy Wright (standing, left) helped City win the Midland War Cup in 1941

All that seemed a long way off by September 1939, when war was declared but the decision was made to continue playing through the hostilities. Filbert Street itself did not quite emerge unscathed from this difficult period, with a bomb causing some damage to the Main Stand on 14 November 1940, the night of the Coventry blitz. There was also extensive damage caused to the Main Stand by a fire on 29 June 1942, with water damage from the Fire Brigade's hoses compounding the situation.

After the war, early renegotiation of the lease looked doomed to failure as the nearby electricity generating station was planning to expand. A hostile press campaign eventually carried the day and the council decided, by a single vote, to allow the club a further 14 years at the site. By the summer of 1948, a major overhaul of the pitch and drainage system had to be undertaken together with a substantial reroofing of the Main Stand.

The Filbert Street Main Stand is fully restored after wartime bomb damage

One of the more dramatic instances on the pitch came in April 1949, with City having just reached Wembley for the first time. The architect of their success, Don Revie, suffered a nose injury in a 3-1 win over Blackburn that haemorrhaged so badly that it nearly cost his life and eventually kept him out of the FA Cup Final a month later.

Promoted again in 1954, the 3-3 draw with Arsenal in October was witnessed by the record league crowd at Filbert Street of 42,486 though the occasion was marred by a couple of pre-match fatalities. The Fifties was a topsy-turvy time for the club, but it saw one further significant development at the ground - the installation of floodlights in 1957. The idea of evening matches had captured the public imagination thanks primarily to tours undertaken by some leading Eastern European clubs and Leicester were keen to get in on the act.

The Sixties were a relatively low key period as far as ground developments were concerned, though there were a few significant landmarks along the way. European competitive football came to Filbert Street in 1961, when City qualified for the European Cup-Winners Cup as a consequence of Tottenham Hotspur completing the double, whilst the ground again staged an FA Cup semi-final, this time the replay between Burnley and Fulham, in 1962.

That same year the club was able to purchase the freehold of the stadium from the council for a sum of £30,500, thus securing their most valuable asset. 1964 and 1965 each saw a major domestic final staged at the ground when the Football League Cup Final, in those days a two-legged affair, came to town. City captured their first senior trophy in this competition by defeating Stoke City 3-2 in the second leg here in 1964, but surrendered the trophy with a 0-0 home draw with Chelsea a year later. So respective skippers Colin Appleton and Terry Venables share the honour of lifting the cup at Filbert Street.

1966, a year synonymous with footballing glory in England, marked the construction of the Fosse Bar in the south-west corner of the ground, and the sale of alcohol at Filbert Street at last, a mere 65 years after the initial application had been rejected.

An aerial view of Filbert Street as it once stood

In contrast, the Seventies was a hive of activity regarding Filbert Street matters. Concerns about the state of the pitch during the winter months led to the purchase of a giant inflatable polysphere for £5,000 in 1971. Dubbed "the tent", players were able to train in shelter beneath the balloon and the investment was recouped several times over in avoided postponements. There were also concerns about the type of goal stanchions in use after Villa's Pat McMahon had an effort, which rebounded into play, disallowed that effectively cost the West Midland outfit relegation. The design was duly changed, only for Portsmouth's Jim Storrie to suffer the same fate the following season.

Increasing concerns about football hooliganism also prompted changes. A penning arrangement was introduced in the Spion Kop in 1972 to help with segregation whilst, at the other end of the social scale, the first executive boxes were built at the Filbert Street end in 1974. Initially four boxes were built overlooking the goalmouth, but so successful was the scheme that the entire roof was soon replaced by a whole suite of 20 such boxes. The paddock in front of the old Main Stand was also redesignated as a family enclosure, with no penning, to try to halt the slide in attendances caused by the reports of hooliganism nationwide.

The first seating was introduced into the centre of the Popular Side in 1975, as an exclusive members club. That particular idea was not a raging success but, by the end of the decade, the entire east and north sides of the ground were all-seated and the capacity had been nominally reduced to around 31,000.

The Eighties were then the decade in which commercialism became important to soccer. It started in 1980 with the construction of the original Belvoir Suite in the centre of the Main Stand, branching out over the edge of the car park, and soon spread onto the pitch with sponsors names appearing on shirts by 1983. Crowd trouble was still prevalent though, with perimeter fencing being introduced, and membership schemes making an appearance in an effort to counter the problems. In January 1985, the Main Stand was redesignated as the Members Stand.

The most significant factor in the modern day development of Filbert Street took place in April 1989 and it happened over 60 miles away. The Hillsborough disaster had some immediate impacts, with the removal of some perimeter fencing, the need to leave exit doors open in others and the general reduction in ground capacity for safety reasons. The biggest impact though, was to set in motion the establishment of Filbert Street as an all-seater stadium. The eighties closed with the construction of an electronic scoreboard on the roof of the East Stand.

Tony James scores the winner against Oxford to save City from relegation

The decade had also seen joyous promotion celebrations at Filbert Street in 1983, but these were dwarfed by the cheers that accompanied victory over Oxford United on the final day of the 1990-91 season when the club avoided relegation to Division Three courtesy of a Tony James goal and a draw for West Bromwich Albion in their final fixture. Little could supporters have anticipated the turnaround of fortunes that would follow.

That autumn was a busy one behind the Filbert Street scenes. Prince Charles visited the ground to help promote Leicester's environmental drive whilst plans were already afoot to replace the old Main Stand, which no longer met required safety standards in the post-Hillsborough era. The first plans were to turn the pitch through 90 degrees, building a new main stand on Filbert Street and a new west end. These proposals were vetoed due to the effect of the proposed new structure on the residents of Filbert Street and the plans for this stand were converted into the present Carling Stand. Work on the building of this structure, at a cost of £5.35 million, was scheduled to commence in 1993.

Before then, onfield fortunes had also changed dramatically, with the club qualifying for the promotion play-offs in 1992 and Filbert Street witnessing a wonderful victory over Cambridge United by 5-0 that took the Foxes through to Wembley for the first time in 23 years. Twelve months later, construction work on the new stand meant that the club had to stage their home play-off semi-final away from Filbert Street and with work still in progress at the beginning of 1993-94, the league programme commenced with a three-sided stadium, no away fans and a real lack of atmosphere. That was all forgotten as the season drew to a close with another dramatic play-off semi-final, this time a 2-1 triumph over Tranmere Rovers, that preceded Wembley success for the first time.

The Double Decker Stand looks a little forlorn after the demolition of the Main Stand, to make way for the new Carling Stand

The new stand itself was one of the most impressive in football, incorporating 28 more executive boxes, top class conference and banqueting facilities and also a souvenir shop. The modern football stadium had become an asset to be used seven days a week rather than just on a Saturday afternoon.

The summer of 1994 also saw seating installed on the Spion Kop, making the stadium all-seater at last, with a theoretical capacity of 22,517. The Double Decker and Spion Kop were now designated as the South Stand Upper and Lower Tiers; the Popular Side had become the East Stand; whilst the Filbert Street End was now known as the North Stand Family Enclosure. The new Members Stand had attracted its own sponsorship and was called the Carling Stand. Somehow it was all a very different world to that in existence when Miss Westland first cast her eye over the field by the river.

Since that time, Filbert Street has continued to witness some emotional occasions - including a couple of League Cup semi-final victories over Sunderland and Aston Villa; and the return of European competitive football after a 36 year gap. The scoreboard has disappeared on the East Stand roof, to be replaced by one above the North Stand but otherwise, developments have been more of a commercial nature.

The impact of inflation on the modern game is reflected by the rise in gate receipts records. The record attendance of 47,298 paid £4,702 back in 1928. The record was still as low as £13,636 some forty years later; the figure passed £100,000 for the first time in 1988 and broke the £250,000 barrier in 1996 on a night when the attendance was a mere 20,428. A figure of £377,467 was set for the League Cup semi-final tie against Aston Villa in February 2000 with 21,843 watching.

The club have collected silverware at Filbert Street three times - the Midland War Cup in 1941, the Football League Cup in 1964 and the FA Charity Shield in 1971 - whilst the stadium has also staged "home" fixtures for two other clubs: Loughborough Town in 1899 and Luton Town in 1987.

The stadium itself has increasingly outgrown its surroundings in recent years and the banks of terraced houses that back onto the East Stand have consistently thwarted any further development. Gradually time has caught up with the place and we have reached the point where further development is not feasible. So it is time to say goodbye to Filbert Street and move to those exciting modern surroundings across the road on Freemen's Wharf and, who knows, somewhere around 2113 someone else might be asked to recall the history of the Walkers Stadium and compare it to the thrills of life in Miss Westland's field.

Demolition work was completed at Filbert Street in 2003, bringing to a final close a chapter in the club's illustrious history as City moved into a new era with promotion back to the Premiership after the first season in their new home, the Walkers Stadium.