The demolition of White Hart Lane has already begun

On Sunday, Tottenham Hotspur said farewell to White Hart Lane, its stadium of 118 years. On Monday, the demolition of the old ground was already well underway.

Spurs chairman Daniel Levy handed the keys to the building over to Mace Construction on Sunday evening after Tottenham’ 2-1 win over Manchester United, and crews worked through the night to begin the process of tearing down the historic old stadium to make way for the club’s sparkling new £800m ground on the same site.

And as you can see based on tweets and photos from social media, already the construction crew has made progress on tearing down the old girl. (Trigger warning: don’t view if you want your last memories of the Lane to be of a rainbow shining over an immaculate 118 year old stadium.)

A couple of observations:

1. As stated in the tweets, the club is not wasting any time in tearing WHL down. Nor should they -- the clock is ticking if they want to have the new stadium finished by the start of the 2018-19 season.
2. There are a LOT of missing seats in that opening video shot, and my guess is those WEREN’T removed by the construction crews. I guess a number of fans didn’t want to spend the £50 to buy their old seat.
3. I just wonder if they’re planning on salvaging any of the old WHL turf for the new ground (though I guess it’d be tough to keep turf alive for a year).

The demolition of the ground is expected to take about three months from start to finish. Why so long? Because it’s probably a bad idea to use explosives to level a building that is so close to what’s already been constructed. Not to mention that it’s a residential area.

While there used to be a webcam pointed at the new stadium so you can track its construction in real time, the club now has a series of periodically updating stillcams that you can check out to track the progress of the new stadium and (presumably) the tearing down of White Hart Lane.

Progress. It hurts sometimes.