I originally titled this 'surge' to give some of the 'smalls' on here an idea of what it was like to stand in the 'Arthur' when it was legal to pretty much do what you wanted to do for 2 hours. The stand had the first third from front to back-terrace. There was then a wall around 8 feet high up to the first seats.
The days when it was legal to jump around like a loon and literally go mental when Palace scored. 30 yards from the triangle of away fans (in the terraced Holmesdale Road end) we would leap on each other, the bloke next to you and eventually in the resulting melee, the bloke who 20 seconds before was standing 20 yards away.
A near miss/bad tackle would result in a mini surge, where any small at the front would have his breath taken away as he was temporarily squashed against the railings at the front.
If a fight kicked off there was the backward surge from those who 'bricked it', then the surge back towards the trouble from guys who wanted to 'have it'. Sometimes you were just picked up and carried whatever way the majority of the crowd wanted to go. It was always easy to get into an away end, but we soon sussed out who the 'foriegners' were amongst us. 9 times out of 10 there was a 15 second punch up, then 'ginge' and the boys in blue would jump in and batter everyone senseless, drag you by the collar/hair/ear up the stairs and kick you in the arse-out into the street. Sometimes this wasn't good as behind the Arthur was where the away coaches were parked and any victims (bashed up and) chucked out by the Old Bill were either joining Northern friends or wanting to kick the crap out of you.
It was not uncommon to have an apple or orange spiked with nails of razors/plastic bottle filled with piss lobbed at us from the away end.

It certainly warmed you up in the depths of winter.

Many happy happy afternoons in the lower Arthur just a 'gob' away from the away fans.

I searched for ages but couldn't find a pic of how it looked, but i'm sure someone will oblige.

Loved standing in the Arthur,worst time was when we played brum and they all came down in fancy dress.Can still see the poor bloke standing just in front/to the side of me getting headbutted after they had started scrapping on the pitch!!Aaaah nostalgia!

For the man love of Claude.He has gone and will be sorely missed.

Hi guys,
I have just joined the forum and can tell you the following.
Arthur was my great Uncle.His brother Bert Wait was my Grandfather. My father started his own company and one of his first jobs was to build all the bars in the Arthur Wait stand.It took me 3 weekends and not much pocket money to whitewash all the walls.
Stephen Carter
from Amsterdam

Bloody good to have you ere mate,,,and flucking ell your an arfur frew and frew, its in your blood

Always the Holmesdale for me back then, but I loved a bit of a surge now and then.

The Main stand had a bit of terrace in front of the seats too, but the atmosphere was nothing like the Arfur.... ie no opposition fans were ever in that bit.

Before Sainsbury's was built the away fans had half or more of the White Horse end.

I liked it best when they were given the s*** little corner between the Arfur and Holmesdale tearracing. The view was bollocks and no one could hear them between our two main blocks of singers.