result of the work of club committee-member William Bardill, a nurseryman and landscape gardener whose family firm still exists in Stapleford. Bardill excavated the playing area to a depth of two feet, lay a bed of clinker to ensure perfect drainage, and on top lay a pitch of high-quality turf brought by barge up the river from Radcliffe-on-Trent. Forest's first round FA Cup match against Wolverhampton Wanderers in 1898 attracted a crowd of 32,070, the first time a football match in Nottingham had attracted gate receipts of over £1,000. The ground was considered to be "one of the best in the country" and was chosen to host the FA Cup Semi final in 1899, recognition that was proclaimed at the club's annual meeting to be "beneficial to the club and the city". The ground held a total of four FA Cup semi-finals between 1899 and 1905, and a full international match between England and Wales in 1909. Throughout the 1900s, Notts County also regularly used the City Ground for home matches when their usual venue at Trent Bridge was unavailable for football due to cricket taking precedence. The new ground was called the City Ground. It was only a few hundred yards from the old Town Ground at the opposite end of Trent Bridge, which had been named after the Town Arms pub. Nottingham was granted its Charter as a city in 1897 and it was called the City Ground to commemorate this as the land on which it stands was at that time within the city boundary. In 1952 boundary changes resulted in the ground coming under the local council of West Bridgford (Rushcliffe Borough Council) rather than the city. Opposite the City Ground, still within the city boundaries, lies Meadow Lane, home of Notts County. The City Ground was the first football ground to have elliptically shaped goalposts when it was presented with a new set of goals by the Nottingham-based Standard Goals Company in 1922. Before this, goalposts had usually been round or square. This shape eventually became commonplace, but the FA's ruling in 1938 that the 8-yard width of a goal should be measured from the inside of such posts meant that the City Ground's goals had been two inches too narrow for the preceding sixteen years. In 1935 the club declined an opportunity to buy the ground from Nottingham Corporation for £7,000. During the Second