It was leased on 21 January 1875[4] by the town's North End sports club and originally used for cricket and rugby.

In the 1890s Preston built the West Paddock, which ran along the touch line and a tent was erected to house the changing rooms.

The pitch was removed to allow the building of the Town End, which was completed in 1928 but was destroyed by fire only five years later and had to be rebuilt.

The record league attendance for Preston North End at Deepdale is 42,684 v Arsenal in the First Division, 23 April 1938.

[2] The women's team Dick, Kerr's Ladies also used to play at Deepdale, regularly attracting crowds of tens of thousands.

Deepdale is now an all-seater stadium with a total capacity of 23,404, as follows:[13] Outside the Sir Tom Finney Stand, is a statue of the famous player himself, sculpted by Preston-born sculptor Peter Hodgkinson.

The statue, commissioned for Finney's 80th birthday and unveiled in July 2004, was inspired by a photo taken at the Chelsea versus PNE game played at Stamford Bridge, in 1956.

[22][23] A proposal to move to Wembley Stadium in 2008 was resisted,[22] but the removal of external funding lead to the museum's relocation to Urbis in Manchester in 2010.