Villa Park Redevelopment

[pauliewalnuts]

24 months to finish it. Heck will be selling seats in it way before then, even if they're plastic fold up ones sitting on barely dry concrete.

To be fair Doug opened the North Stand way before it was finished too.
Remember being up there wet paint, the side panels not on, was like a wind tunnel

He wasn't chairman then.

oh yes course , he came back after 1982. Must have been Bendall then. Point stands though, the stand wasn't quite finished yet they opened it.

Try Harry Kartz.

Might have been William Dugdale . Looks like the North Stand opened in Oct 77

By which time Sir William (Bill to his friends) had resigned.

I wonder which media outlets Sir William subscribed to in order to maintain his Villa fix.

[dave.woodhall]

I wonder which media outlets Sir William subscribed to in order to maintain his Villa fix.

Funny you should say that.

[avfcdale]

Definitely Major William Dugdale 1st battalion Grenadier Guards, 1st tank over nijmegen bridge

[oldhill_avfc]

Daily Telegraph Obituary - an amazing life


Sir William Dugdale, 2nd Bt, who has died aged 92, was a well-known figure in sporting and political circles, known as a war hero, colliery owner, aviator, chairman of Aston Villa, author of a famously lively memoir and one of Warwickshire’s most raffish and entertaining characters.

The scion of a distinguished Midlands family which included his namesake, the antiquarian author of the 1656 classic Antiquities of Warwickshire, as well as numerous landowners, heralds, mine owners and politicians, William Stratford Dugdale was born on March 29 1922, the eldest child of Sir William Francis Stratford Dugdale and his wife Margaret (née Gilmour). William (universally known as “Bill”) and his three siblings grew up at the family’s two great houses, Blyth Hall and Merevale, near Atherstone, unkindly dubbed “the second ugliest house in Warwickshire”. At the hands of his nanny, Florence Screech (“a great believer in 'spare the rod and spoil the child’”), and his “firm disciplinarian” mother, he enjoyed an adventurous, though strict, upbringing.

His father successfully expanded Baddesley colliery near Merevale – after his own father had gone down the shaft to rescue entombed miners following a catastrophic explosion in 1882 and been caught in a subsequent blast, dying from his burns nine days later.

As a child, Bill was proud to be chosen as pageboy to his great-uncle Will in his ceremonial duties as Chancellor of London University. In 1930 he saw his uncle, the 7th Earl Beauchamp (Evelyn Waugh’s model for Lord Marchmain in Brideshead Revisited), publicly outed as a homosexual by political enemies and forced to emigrate.

From Eton, Bill went up to Balliol College, Oxford, where he joined the Officer Training Corps and the Gridiron, and became secretary of the university Conservative association.

After throwing soot and water over some demonstrators (and, by accident, a policeman) he was arrested and spent a night in the cells, an experience he described as “highly embarrassing”. Following an intervention by his mother, he signed up for the Army (“after a boozy lunch at the Carlton”) and went to Sandhurst.

Dugdale was commissioned into the Grenadier Guards and posted to the 3rd Battalion. In 1943 he was awarded a Military Cross for leading his platoon up a Tunisian hillside under intense fire to knock out a German machine-gun post. During the assault, two of the Germans pulled Dugdale into the trench and he struggled with them for several minutes before the rest of his platoon arrived and took them prisoner.

Later he was with Bill Sidney (Viscount De L’Isle) when he won his VC at Anzio, and was himself mentioned in despatches for his role in defending the Anzio beachhead in an action in which he was his company’s only surviving officer. Two days before the end of the war he and his company drove past the bodies of Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci, strung up by their ankles in an Esso petrol station.

In 2011 Dugdale published a highly readable memoir, Settling the Bill. In it he recounted how, at the end of the war, he had been escorting the German Field Marshals von Rundstedt and von Kleist by aircraft to Nuremberg when Kleist peered out of the window over Dunkirk and began a long, excited conversation in German. “I asked Rundstedt, who spoke very good English, 'What did he say?’ 'Oh,’ said Rundstedt, he said, 'I can see the crossroads where I took the decision that lost Germany the war.’ 'What was that decision?’ I asked. 'Oh,’ said Rundstedt, 'he sent his tanks to St Valery instead of driving directly into Dunkirk.’ ”

Then, as the aircraft flew into an electric storm, Rundstedt decided he had to go to the lavatory: “He lost his balance and shot down the floor and, as the loo door on the left was open, he shot inside. I undid my seat belt to rescue him and was immediately myself upended, and sailed down the plane. As I got to the end, the other door flew open and the Field Marshal shot out, as I shot in by the left-hand door.” Eventually Rundstedt was returned to his seat. “He still hadn’t had his pee,” Dugdale recorded.

After the war Dugdale took over the family estates, regretfully negotiating compensation when Baddesley colliery was nationalised in 1947. He trained as a solicitor and indulged his taste for thrills as an amateur jockey, riding Cloncarrig in the 1952 Grand National. Later that year he married the vivacious Lady Belinda Pleydell-Bouverie, daughter of the 6th Earl of Radnor , after meeting her on a skiing trip.

When Dugdale’s father announced that race riding was not a suitable sport for a married man, the couple began racehorse breeding, and developed a passion for planes and fast cars (particularly Jensens, Mercedes and Allards). Dugdale was no playboy, however, and was active in local government, leading the ruling Conservative group on Warwickshire County Council and overseeing the development of Chelmsley Wood and the construction of the Collector Road during the Birmingham slum clearances in the 1960s. He was selected as the Conservative parliamentary candidate for Oswestry, but shelved his political ambitions when Belinda died of cancer in 1961, leaving him with four children under eight.

Dugdale succeeded in the baronetcy on his father’s death in 1965, and two years later married Cylla Mount, the sister of Prime Minister David Cameron’s mother Mary. She proved a much-loved stepmother to his children and had two of her own.

A lifelong Aston Villa fan, Dugdale became chairman of the club in 1975, overseeing the appointment of the well-respected manager Ron Saunders and the club’s resurgence from the Third to the First Division. While negotiating the striker Andy Gray’s wage demands, he was baffled when Gray repeatedly went to the window and made tic-tac signals with his fingers to his agent standing below. “The next time Andy got up,” he recalled, “I went to the other window and leant out, which brought the signalling to an end. We reached agreement soon after.”

Dugdale was ousted in 1982 when Doug Ellis, nicknamed “Deadly Doug”, returned as chairman and reputedly sent him a tie embroidered with the letters SBE (“Sacked by Ellis”). He was a canny and knowledgeable chairman of Severn Trent Water Authority (1974–83) and of General Utilities (1988–99), and served as both High Sheriff and Deputy Lieutenant of Warwickshire. He was appointed CBE in 1982.

He is survived by his wife, two sons and four daughters. His elder son, William Matthew Stratford Dugdale, born in 1959, succeeds in the baronetcy.

Sir William Dugdale, 2nd Bt, born March 29 1922, died November 13 2014

[pauliewalnuts]

What an incredible life.

Also Florence Screech. What a great Dickensian name.

[pauliewalnuts]

Just ordered his memoir.

[PeterWithe]

Indeed, David Cameron's uncle wasn't he?

I don't think the von Rundstedt story, whilst a great tale, is true mind.

Pal of mine still does some work at Merevale Hall, there are some historic Villa shirts displayed there.

[LeeB]

Dugdale was ousted in 1982 when Doug Ellis, nicknamed “Deadly Doug”, returned as chairman and reputedly sent him a tie embroidered with the letters SBE (“Sacked by Ellis)”

Always a wanker.

[oldhill_avfc]

Just ordered his memoir.

Would be interesting to know if it sheds any new light on the rebuilding of the club from the late 60s - although you’d assume it was read by the various authors of Villa books covering that period.

[SaddVillan]

 ???You don't win a Military Cross by hanging around with the General Staff and aide-de-camp johnnies safely behind the lines.  Must have been a pretty brave bloke who lived life to the full.

[SaddVillan]

You don't win a Military Cross by hanging around with the General Staff and aide-de-camp johnnies safely behind the lines.  Must have been a pretty brave bloke who lived life to the full.

[PeterWithe]

Just ordered his memoir.

Same here, £2

[LeeS]

Just reading that English Rugby are considering relocating from Twickenham to a new stadium in Birmingham. Despite the fact that it is almost certainly just leverage to get concessions from the local council, it does raise the question of where they would put it? And if they did build one, would it limit our ability to host big non-football events.

[Nev]

Small Heath and Rugby Union, match made in hell.

[dave.woodhall]

Dugdale was ousted in 1982 when Doug Ellis, nicknamed “Deadly Doug”, returned as chairman and reputedly sent him a tie embroidered with the letters SBE (“Sacked by Ellis)”

Always a wanker.

He actually resigned in 1977. Two years later it was his late decision to vote with Bendall rather than abstain which led to Ellis losing his no-confidence vote.