I MUST compliment your excellent article and photographs when I reported poppies growing near the centre spot at Burnden Park during the demolition of the stadium.

Mr Briggs, the demolition contractor, stated that the seeds must have blown in with the wind, but I am disregarding this theory.

I have had a communication, through a friend, from the Deputy Editor of Gardening (Which) Magazine, who states that poppy and certain other seeds can lie dormant for well over a hundred years, providing that they are in a dry environment and are unable to germinate. This is what has happened at Burnden, and they have been uncovered during the sale of the cinder ash covering the football pitch.

I have been involved with the poppy movement at Remembrance Weekend, being a member of the United Veterans Association, and I would like to believe that the poppies growing on the pitch on the very last year of Burnden Park is Nature's last defiant tribute to all the Bolton Wanderers' players and staff who lost their lives in the two World Wars.

Tom Harrington, Fair Street, Bolton.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.