newspaper columnist commenting that "so long as the Forest Club will maintain a ground on which it is impossible for them to play their particular game accurately, in addition to being bleak and generally inaccessible, they will meet with little patronage". Despite moving three years later to the nearby Gregory Ground, which was much better reviewed in the press, Lenton's distance from the centre of Nottingham saw attendances continue to decline and in 1890 the club moved again, this time to the Town Ground in The Meadows, which was much closer to the club's roots and became Forest's first proper football stadium. In July 1897 the Town Ground was briefly renamed the City Ground, in recognition of Nottingham being granted city status, but the newly-formed city council planned to redevelop the site for building and terminated Forest's lease, offering instead the site on the south side of the river that would become today's City Ground. This land had been granted to the Mayor and Burgesses of Nottingham by Edward VI in a royal charter dated 21 February 1551, with the intention that rentals from the agricultural land would pay for the upkeep of the adjacent Trent Bridge. The City Council granted the club a 21-year lease on the new site, and the club approved the scheme to move to the new ground at their annual meeting in December 1897. To raise the £3,000 required to finance the move the club asked members, supporters and businessmen to subscribe to "New Ground Scheme" bonds which cost £5 each, raising over £2,000. Many of the bonds were never redeemed, the bondholders effectively making a donation to fund the new ground. Early years Forest first played at the new City Ground a week before their FA Cup Final victory in April 1898, and the reserve team played there on the afternoon of the final itself, but the ground was not officially opened until the first match of the following season, a Division One game against Blackburn Rovers on 3 September 1898 with an attendance of 15,000. The ground had a wooden-slatted main stand on the west side with a barrel roof, a narrow wooden shelter covering the full width of the Trent End, and a shorter roof covering part of the east side. The pitch was considered to be among the finest in the country, "a velvet carpet of lush turf". This was the