7 Years of the 1st Hampden Mural

On the 9th September 2019, the 1st Hampden Park was officially marked on the world map by Hampden Bowling Club, The Hampden Collection (pre-cursor to Football’s Square Mile) and by the creative genius of Ashley Rawson, friend and neighbour of the bowling club, and now Football’s Square Mile’s Creative Director.

This week we mark 7 years since it was unveiled, and we wanted to showcase the big videos that have followed this journey.

Here is the first one out of the blocks - at the time the back wall of Hampden Bowling Club was an eyesore; a place unrecognised by the footballing world. The 1st Hampden site would become Scotland’s focal point as the cradle of the modern game and template for the world’s football stadia.

This is the single most important public works we have done; and has captured everyone’s imagination to prove out Scotland’s trailblazing footballing heritage.

Football’s Square Mile was built on top of this foundation.

The journey through time takes many turns. But the ambition and hope of this area flows through everything we do. The Mount Florida Bloodline video, kindly sponsored by Rettie, was created to showcase the #KeepHampdenRoaring campaign in 2017 to keep the home of Scottish Football at 3rd Hampden, and not move to Murrayfield in Edinburgh,

This began the journey of using poetry as a way of telling this story, and was brilliantly performed by the first Poet-In-Chief of The Hampden Collection, Stephen Watt, with a notable cast of Graeme Brown and Keith McAllister.

This was before the mural was in place but it’s important that the bowling club (even without the mural) held special appeal to everyone who visited and was one of the 3 Hampden Parks.

This has been dug out of the archives from 2016, when it was first aired on the BBC Scotland ‘Out of Doors’ programme. This was before the map that officially proved the site, and is an important oral history of the club. Even then we had lofty ambitions.

With the mural, everything changed. Here is our Second Poet-In-Chief, Jim Mackintosh, expertly explaining the world’s most important football ground, and why it matters to everyone who visits it.

Building on the shoulders of giants is our mission. In 2024, we pulled together everything we had learned, everyone we had convinced about the story of Scottish football, and we built the world’s biggest open-air football museum. Look it up today on ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude and you will find out it is a one of a kind.

Here is the launch video made by the Scottish Football Association, and once again the mural is a key marker within the video. Our Third Poet-In-Chief, Julie McNeill scribed, ‘Upon Our Shoulders’, as the showpiece backbone to the video.

So if you are still not convinced lets look at two really important videos from our YouTube pals. Sammy North up first. We coin this ‘The Greatest Story Never Told’ and here is the proof. There is a video from the Covid years, where Sam discovers the mural for the first time, but this one is even more important. How do you convince someone that they are standing in the home of the beautiful game?

And to show the importance of the mural today, even with the fact that Hampden Bowling Club shut in March 2026, after 121 years of operation, the mural still plays a big part in everything we do. Take a peek at Ry’s Football Paradise video, recently filmed, and showcases the mural on the YouTube thumbnail after his 3 Hampdens Walking Tour with our best pal Lindsay from Glasgow Football Tour.

Our mission is to make Football’s Square Mile a UNESCO world heritage site. The sites of 1st and 2nd Hampden are now protected by Historic Environment Scotland as national monuments. Dreams are coming true, and we continue to showcase this to the world.

The narrative is changing, Scotland is becoming more protective of its story of building the beautiful game. Look at the Boston Experience of the World Cup - the Tartan Army were on fire. No Scotland, No Party.

The gift of the beautiful game is for the 4 billion people who watch or play it. We want you to come visit. This is for everyone.

Here is a video when the world’s top football historians came along to hear this story.

The mural was the flag in the ground. We will never forget its origins. A chat with a neighbour about a 100 foot wall on the back of Hampden Bowling Club. Do you think you can knock something up, Ash? The transformation was ridiculously good.

Ashley came along with his amazing design, which has become the showpiece symbol of everything we have done. Along with the Football’s Square Mile logo, these are insanely beautiful works of art that punch you in the face. They make you wake up and ask a very simple question - why don’t I know about this?

The above videos are a showcase of many of the individuals who have been part of this journey so far. We are deeply indebted to everyone who has been part of this bonkers, cart-upending story. We are super-proud of the collective efforts by the First Hampden CIC Team (member of the Football’s Square Mile Alliance) and everything they are doing to take the 1st Hampden site back in the Community hands. Support their story here - https://firsthampden.org/

The 1st Hampden Mural was one of the reasons that they have all helped. Ash once said, “The mural is Go Big, or Go Home’.

We are so glad we go big.

Art, Poetry, and Film - now that’s a beautiful combination, which follows in the footsteps of the ultimate footballing trailblazers.

The Scotch Professors.