Easter Road is a football stadium located in the Leith area of Edinburgh, Scotland, which is the home ground of Scottish Premiership club Hibernian (Hibs).

[1][2] The venue has also been used to stage international matches, Scottish League Cup semi-finals and was briefly the home ground of the Edinburgh professional rugby union team.

After the publication of the Taylor Report, Hibs considered leaving Easter Road and moving to a different site (Straiton, near Loanhead was mooted), but these plans were abandoned in 1994.

[11] This location had the advantage of being equidistant between their two main sources of support, the Irish immigrant communities in the port of Leith and the Old Town of Edinburgh.

[12] When Hibs suffered financial difficulties in the early 1890s, the lease on Hibernian Park expired and developers started building what would become Bothwell Street.

[1] The site had restricted access from Easter Road, a pronounced slope and was in close proximity to Bank Park, the home of Leith Athletic.

[10][16] Two years later, three banks of terraces were raised, while a main stand seating 4,480 people was built on the west side of the ground.

[13] Hibs enjoyed great success in the period immediately after the end of the Second World War,[10] winning three league championships between 1948 and 1952.

[10] The Easter Road floodlights were installed by a local company, Miller & Stables, who would construct similar leaning gantries in many other Scottish grounds.

[10] The new regime spent approximately £1 million on executive boxes and refurbishments, but their policy of diversifying the business into property and public houses crippled the club financially when there was an economic downturn in the late 1980s.

[10] Hearts chairman Wallace Mercer attempted a takeover of Hibs in June 1990, with the intention of merging the two major Edinburgh football clubs.

[10] Sir Tom Farmer took control of Hibs in 1991,[22] but the club was still faced with the need to develop a stadium that would meet the requirements of the Taylor Report.

[6] The Hibs board made an assessment, however, that the ground could not be renovated in a cost-effective fashion before the August 1994 deadline set by the Taylor Report.

[6] Hibs proposed in January 1992 to sell Easter Road and move to a site owned by Farmer in Straiton.

[6] Those plans were scaled down in 1993 when Lothian Regional Council refused to allow the rest of the Straiton site to be used for commercial development.

[6] The Hibs board continued to back the Straiton proposal and they insisted the installation of bucket seats in the uncovered South Terrace was merely to comply with the Taylor Report deadline.

[27] Hibs hoped that selling the Easter Road site would allow them to clear their debts and reduce costs.

[21] Petrie announced at the 2009 annual general meeting that the club would enter negotiations with contractors to establish the cost of rebuilding the stand.

[35] After these negotiations were concluded, Hibs announced in February 2010 that work would immediately begin on a new East Stand, increasing capacity to 20,421.

[39][40] Easter Road is an all-seated stadium, split into four geographic sections, known as the Famous Five (formerly North),[21] East, South and West stands.

[4] The decision to build the East Stand as a single tier was taken to maintain the character of the old terrace, which had been a simple viewing area without many facilities.

[46] The match was moved from Rovers' normal home ground of Stark's Park due to Easter Road's greater capacity.

[66] Heineken Cup matches against Ebbw Vale and Toulouse were played at the ground during the 1998–99 season, with attendances of a few thousand.

[66][67] Edinburgh again expressed interest in using Easter Road in both 2004 and 2006, but this was opposed by Hibs manager Tony Mowbray, who was concerned that playing rugby would damage the pitch.

[69] In June 2015, the SRU chief executive indicated that trial matches could be played at Easter Road with a view to Edinburgh Rugby moving there for a longer term.