- The stand
- Timber terracing and a pitched roof on iron columns reads pre-war. Concrete terracing with crush barriers is mid-century; all-seater bowls with cantilever roofs come after the 1990s safety rebuilds.
- Floodlights
- No pylons at all means daytime-only fixtures and usually pre-1950s. Four corner pylons are the 1950s to 1980s; roof-mounted continuous lighting is the modern rebuild.
- Kit and equipment
- Long shorts, heavy boots, leather balls and no numbers point pre-1940. Numbers, then names, then shirt sponsors from the late 1970s, mark the decades out one by one.
- Advertising
- Painted hoardings say pre-1970. Rotating boards arrive in the 1980s and LED perimeter boards after 2005 — one of the fastest hard limits in the game.
- The crowd
- Flat caps and hats en masse read as pre-1960. Replica shirts in the stands are a 1980s onward phenomenon, and a sea of phone screens puts you after 2010.