Grounds of the Past: Hurlingham Park, East Brighton

Hurlingham Park was the home of the old Brighton Soccer Club. The club played from the East Brighton venue from foundation in 1924 until a move to Elsternwick Park in 1954. In their time there the club were Dockerty Cup winners on five occasions, as well as securing the First Division Championship (then the State Championship) in 1949.

That year the reserves also won their league championship, and a photo of that team on their website gives us a small glimpse at Hurlingham Park featuring a pavilion that no longer stands:

We can see from the plaque on the current pavilion that it was erected in 1955, after Brighton had moved on to the enclosed ground at Elsternwick Park prior to relocating to Dendy Park in 1959.

The ground was, and still remains, the home of the Brighton Union Cricket Club (founded in 1907). As such it would have been another soccer ground in a large open park, probably with the sides roped off to keep spectators away from the touchlines.

The pavilion is situated on the busy Nepean Highway side of the ground. A pre-school sits to the east, housing in the north with a tennis club in the north west corner. To the west of the pavilion sits a memorial to those lost in the First World War:

Hurlingham Park is another ground thousands of people will drive past every day with little idea that the premier footballers in the state once strutted their stuff there. Four sets of traffic lights and less than two kilometres further down the Nepean Highway sits Dendy Park, current home of the Brighton SC. The club struck financial difficulties in the mid-1990's and ceased fielding a senior team in 1996. The strong junior base survived and thrived, and in 2007 a senior team was accepted into the FFV's Provisional League Division Three South East.

As per usual, click on photographs to enlarge.