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Bulls historian Ron Parrott has written this piece on the history of Edgar Street:
The piece of land was well used with the Hereford & County Amateur Athletics Club and many different Hereford football teams using it, including Hereford City, Hereford Town and Hereford Thistle.
On February 18th 1920, the first meeting of a committee, which had been formed at a public meeting at the Town Hall, with the object of promoting a company to acquire the land as a sports centre, was held in the office of Mr. H. P. Barnsley, present chairman of the HFA, who was acting as secretary. Mr. E. Stanton Jones was elected chairman and it is reported that there was an excellent attendance. An appeal was issued from the meeting to intending shareholders showing that the aims were to purchase and develop the land as a sports centre for the city and county, thus providing a first class ground for the holding of athletic sports, football and encourage all games and pastimes.
Purchase price was to be £2,000 and the capital of the new Company fixed at £5,000 of £1 ordinary shares. £3,000 of which would be issued on the formation of the company, with the remaining £2,000 to be issued if and when necessary. £1,500 had already been promised and the company was to be known as "Hereford Athletic Ground Co." The appeal also intimated that the vendors were prepared to sell (n.b. not "donate") to the proposed company for the specific purpose of creating a central sports ground. (I suspect but cannot confirm that this was Bulmers).
In March 1920, the final decision to purchase the ground was taken at another meeting and it is interesting to note that those at the meeting were E. Stanton-Jones, H. P. Barnsley, W. J. Bowers, A. D. Briscoe, G. R. Smith, M. C. Oatfield, W. H. Wright, J. Sayce and F. Allcock. It was reported that the capital of £2,175 had been subscribed and that the purchase price was £2,000. The ground by the way, was described as a meadow of 4-1/2 acres.
Athletic meetings were held on the ground, as well as football matches but in 1924 the Hereford and County Amateur Athletic Club complained of lack of support for sports meetings and intimated that it could not undertake to provide any more without guarantees, thus athletic meetings at Edgar Street were no more. In the same year the Company decided that too many football clubs were using the facilities and that in future, two would be sufficient to use the ground on alternate weeks. One of these was the newly formed Hereford United, who took up residence and paid their landlord the princely sum of £82 and 2shillings in rent that first season.
Incidentally, In my own collection, I have a programme for a "Grand Cycling and Athletics" event staged at Edgar Street on August bank holiday 1922.
Hereford United players used to change at the Wellington Hotel and had to walk to the ground! United struggled financially during those early seasons and had to launch several public appeals to stay afloat and their landlords helped out by reducing their rent until by the 1929/30 season they were only paying £14. 7s 0d per year.
Then, in 1930 came the first suggestions that the Company wanted to sell the ground and the HFA in May 1930 confirmed its interest so that it would continue to be the home of football in the County. In December 1930, Hereford City Council came into the picture as prospective buyers and allocated the sum of £2,750 out of the £3,000 "Jackson bequest" for the acquisition of the ground and although there was some opposition at the monthly meeting, the Council eventually decided by a large majority to make an offer for it. Negotiations were successful and in mid-1931 the Council paid £3,000 for the ground, after the Hereford Athletic Ground Ltd. had passed a motion to sell the land at a price which would yield at least par value to the shareholders on condition that the ground should be reserved for sport.
Thus Hereford City Council bought the Edgar Street ground for £3,000 from the Hereford Athletic Ground Co. and became the legitimate and legal owners of the land.
The Council leased it back to United at a much higher rent of £126 per season, reducing each season to £93 at the end of the 1937/38 season just before war broke out. After the war, the council set the rent at just over £100 until March 1952 when the council granted United a 14-year lease at a "peppercorn" rate of £1 per season. From 1966 onwards the council set a revised and realistic rate each year until the ignominious events of the late nineties!
This is where my feelings of injustice enter the fray! Basically, Hereford United sold the lease in 1996 to a development company in return for a loan of one million pounds. The development company then expected to more than cover their loan when the club was to relocate outside the city and Edgar Street was to be developed for purposes other than sport.
The only major change since then is that it's no longer the wish of the Club to relocate and they wish Edgar Street to be redeveloped as part of the ESG project.