Colchester Community Stadium

About

Colchester Community Stadium, known as the JobServe Community Stadium for sponsorship reasons, is a football stadium in Myland, England. It is the home of Colchester United Football Club. It has a capacity of 10,105 and opened in August 2008 in time for the 2008–09 season. The stadium is the largest entertainment venue in Essex, hosting regular conferences, shows, and events, including open-air concerts, with a capacity of 20,000 for such events. A stadium working party was first set up by Colchester Borough Council in 1976 in order to assess the feasibility and possible location for a new stadium for Colchester United. After 30 years of discussions and various site suggestions, a location in the north of Colchester called Cuckoo Farm on land owned by Colchester Borough Council was settled on. Detailed planning permission was fully granted in June 2007 on the stadium which would cost £14 million, replacing the club's Layer Road ground, which had been their home since Colchester United's foundation in 1937. Work began in July 2007 and construction was completed in August 2008 ahead of Colchester United's first match at the stadium. After ten years of sponsorship, it was announced that the naming rights would switch from Weston Homes to JobServe in another ten-year deal. The stadium would now be known as the JobServe Community Stadium. On 23 June 2025, Ipswich Town announced that Ipswich Women will play home games the JobServe Community Stadium for the next two seasons. The agreement will also see Ipswich Under-21s play a number of games at the venue.

Colchester United's previous ground, Layer Road, was built in 1910, homing United's predecessors Colchester Town. Town were an amateur club and were wound down in 1937 to begin a professional club for Colchester that would be known Colchester United, as the new club moved into Town's Layer Road ground. With an ageing stadium, throughout the 1970s to the mid-2000s, Colchester United and Colchester Borough Council had been looking to re-home the club. Attention was first brought to the idea of relocation during the 1970s, when club chairman Maurice Cadman announced that Layer Road required £280,000 of basic improvements to meet the required safety legislation of the time. When the ground was purchased from the Council in 1971, a covenant was placed on Layer Road that the site could not be sold to be developed as housing. Potential resolutions for the problem included moving the pitch and building a new main stand, but proved to be too expensive for the club's ailing finances. The plans would have created an 'adequately' sized stadium with an 18,000 capacity, though the season ended with an average of just 3,818 in attendance. In 1976, Colchester Borough Council set up a stadium working party to work towards solutions, locations and study the feasibility for a new stadium for the town. During the 1980–81 season, plans were submitted for an all-seater stadium at the Avenue of Remembrance, Colchester. However, the club ended the season 22nd out of 24 in the Third Division table and relegated to the Fourth Division, with an average gate of just 2,641 and a new all-time lowest attendance of 1,430. The stadium plan was rejected by the council on the grounds of the covenant restrictions. In the wake of the Bradford City stadium fire on 11 May 1985 which left 56 people dead, owing to the stadium's antiquated wooden structure, it became of utmost importance to accelerate Colchester United's move from the timber-constructed Layer Road stands to a new stadium. Just 18 days later, the Heysel Stadium disaster occurred, leading to 39 deaths and hundreds of injuries. Layer Road faced £500,000 of safety improvements, but with no money, the club closed sections of the ground which reduced capacity to 4,900. A new location for a replacement stadium was mooted at Turner Rise, Colchester, as new owner and chairman Jonathan Crisp introduced developers Norcross Estates as shirt sponsors for the 1987–88 season. Crisp considered selling Layer Road and ground-sharing Portman Road with neighbours and rivals Ipswich Town whilst the Turner Rise stadium was constructed. However, the plans were delayed and eventually scrapped, with Crisp's plan to ground-share swayed by a group of Colchester United's former directors. A later plan to build a stadium at Wick Lane, Ardleigh saw plans thrown out as Colchester were relegated from the Football League for the first time in 40 years. Layer Road was sold back to the Council for £1.2 million in the early 1990s in order to clear Colchester United's debts, with the club leasing the stadium for three years. Following this, the Football League required all clubs to have a minimum lease of ten years on all stadia, to which the Council extended the arrangement. Meanwhile, the Borough Council also determined ten potential sites for a new stadium to be contracted, with each examined. With the lease on Layer Road due to expire in 2002, Kirklees McAlpine were commissioned as consultants for a new stadium in 1998. A preferred site at Cuckoo Farm was identified, with additional benefit being that the land was already owned by the Council.

Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). Photography via Wikimedia Commons.