up their Big Top. The original Love Street site housed the re-built club pavilion behind the Love Street end goal, and a new grandstand, squeezed along the full length of the pitch with five rows of seats and a total capacity of 1,000. St Mirren played their first home game at Love Street, a 3–0 defeat to Celtic, on 8 September 1894. Shortly after the original ten-year lease ran out, the club was almost forced to move away from Love Street, much as it had already been from Westmarch. With the club approaching Mr Fullerton with an offer to buy the site, the landowner tried to take advantage of the situation by setting a lofty price, together with an ultimatum to either buy or face a hefty increase in rent. The club hastily looked for alternatives, and began negotiations with the owners of the Shortroods Estate where St Mirren had played for its first season. However, with the prospect of losing out altogether, Mr Fullerton backed down, reducing his asking price to £3,900 and thus Saints purchased and stayed at Love Street. Over the course of the next fifteen years the club's aim was to expand the site by buying the land that bordered on two sides – towards the town and round onto Greenock Road. However, it was not until 1920 that the land was finally secured and St Mirren owned pretty much the site that it occupied through to its closure. Development of Love Street With a large site now owned, and the football pitch about to be moved 40 yards towards the town, the club had plans in 1921 for a 60,000 capacity ground with a large oval sweep of earth embankments on three sides, with the fourth side taken up by a 4,500 seater grandstand set up above a 3,000 capacity terraced enclosure, with a 440-yard running track round the pitch. However, before building began, the Great Depression in the United Kingdom tightened its grip and costs more than doubled in the space of six months. The part of the project to suffer most was the grandstand as the final price of the stadium rose from an estimate of £17,500, for the full plans, to around £30,000 for the scaled-down version that was completed six months later. The grandstand was reduced in size by almost two-thirds with the steel framework clad in corrugated sheeting to further