PROGRESS AT WEMBLEY

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 248, 19 October 1922, Page 5

PROGRESS AT WEMBLEY

BRITISH EMPIRE EXHIBITION, 1924. ITS STADIUM THE BIGGEST EVER. CFroin Our Special Correspondent.) LONDON, August 25. Those who saw Wembley ami the inchoate site of the 102* exhibition when the Duke of York turned the first sod six months ago could hardly credit the advance that has been made in the interval on revisiting it yesterday.

The Stadium, which promises to lie a highly remunerative part of the enterprise is now in position in skeleton. So well advanced is it that it will be all ready for next year's cup tie. This huge erection will be to North London what the new Wimbledon ground is to the Surrey side for tennis.

Some conception of the size of the Wembley Stadium can be obtained Instating that it is half as large again as the Roman Coliseum, covers an acreage two and a-half times as great, am , will hold an eighth of a million spectators. There will be seating accommodation for 35,000, and of these 2:3,000 will be under cover —the whole of this huge edifice is to be completed within thirteen months.

It is a big thing and those responsible are staking their reputation on its being the best and biggest of its kind in the world —Messrs. J. W. Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton the architects, Mr E. O. Williams, the engineer, and Sir Robert Mealpine and Sons, the contractors.

The completion of the stadium, an enterprise long overdue owing to the insufficiency of the Crystal Palace grounds for the big football events >vill, of course, make Wembley an attraction in the forthcoming winter, a year before the exhibition proper is ready.

i But the exhibition building itself is 'well under way for its 1924 achievements already foundations cover twelve acres of ground, and these, when completed will extend to twenty acres of ground. The machinery section alone will take up four-acres, and railway tracks will run through the buildings to faeilitaate transport of goods. Exhibits will thus be brought right into the exhibition building without breaking bulk.

A comparison which gives some idea of the size of this Imperial Exhibition Building is that the southern facade would if ptaced in London's centre stretch from the Carlton at the foot of Hayniarket across Trafalgar Squnre and down Northumberland Avenue to tile Thames.

Everything that can be imagined of comfort and beauty in the restaurant o and gardens is to be provided. The special pavilions to be erected have not yet beer, plannned, but judging by tie generous financial support already forthcoming from India, Australia and South Africa the other British Dominions will fall into line so that the actual and potential resources of each will be worthily set forth and displayed at the great reunion of the British Commonwealth of Nations which is to foregather there in 1024.

In spite of its being on the outer fringe of London, Wembley is extraordinarily -accessible. It is only fifteen minutes 1\ tube from Piccadilly. To encourage motor bus services a garage for their accommodation is to be erected in the exhibition bo that passengers will be run right into the grounds and alight there from the busses.