Essendon’s move to The Hangar in 2013 was the culmination of a journey that began when the club was formed in 1872.

In the intervening 141 years the club has played at numerous home grounds.

Our very first home ground was McCracken’s Paddock, so-called because the land was owned by club president Robert McCracken and the ground adjoined his home in Kent Street, Ascot Vale.

McCracken purchased this 12.5-acre property in 1865, a few years before he formed the club. The land was originally a part of a larger parcel of land owned by Hugh Glass and, not surprisingly, known as Glass’s Paddock. This land sat in an area to the west of Mount Alexander Road and was known as Flemington Hill.

Newspaper reports in the 1870s and early 1880s refer to Essendon playing home games on McCracken’s Paddock, Glass’s Paddock and Flemington Hill. This has led to a search for each of these grounds, but it seems likely that these were three names used to describe the same ground.

Beginning in 1882 Essendon began playing home games at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground, nine in all, while also playing three on Flemington Hill. By 1883 all of the club’s home games were at the East Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Situated on Jolimont Rd, the extension of Brunton Avenue and only 200m from the MCG, today the site is occupied by apartment buildings.

By today’s standards the East Melbourne Cricket Ground was nothing fancy but it had a grandstand, some low shelters and was well located, a vast improvement of McCracken’s Paddock.

It was also here, over 40-year period, where Essendon won eight premierships: four in the VFA between 1891 and 1894 and four in the VFL in 1897, 1901, 1911 and 1912. That’s an average of one every five seasons.  

In 1920 Essendon was advised that the Railways Department was claiming the East Melbourne Cricket Ground to extend its railyards. This meant Essendon would be homeless.

Various options were considered including an invitation from the Royal Agricultural Society to move to the Showgrounds and an invitation from Collingwood to play at Victoria Park.

There was also an invitation from North Melbourne in the VFA, which offered to amalgamate with Essendon with the new club playing home games at their Arden Street ground. The amalgamation never went ahead.

On 14 October 1921 the VFL met and approved an application from Essendon to play its home games at the Essendon Recreation Reserve in Napier Street, the ground we all know today as Windy Hill.

For the very first time in Essendon’s history the club was heading home to the suburb bearing its name. The Essendon Recreation Reserve was situated on 10 acres and encircled by palm trees.

Most importantly, it was also serviced by both trams and trains, making it accessible to the club’s supporters. One newspaper described it as “like fairyland compared with the cramped, drab and unattractive East Melbourne ground”. 

Essendon played 628 games at Windy Hill over 90 seasons between 1922 and 1991 and the ground was, for many fans, the only home ground that they ever knew.

Over time the club outgrew the ground and in 1992 Essendon began playing home games at the MCG where its vastly larger capacity could accommodate the Bomber faithful.

In that first season Essendon’s home crowd increased from an average of 17,400 at Windy Hill the year before to almost 37,000 at the MCG.

With the building of the new Docklands Stadium, Essendon became the first club to announce it would play home games there and became an anchor tenant when the ground opened in 2000. Essendon continues to play home games there today.