In 1923, Queen's Park were looking for an alternative venue for their reserves and youth teams. The club purchased a farm on the west side of Hampden Park and built a pitch and stands. When it opened in 1924, Lesser Hampden had a capacity of 12,000. To reduce costs, the original farmhouse building was retained and was converted into a pavilion and dressing room. This farmhouse, which dates back to the 19th century, is believed by football historians to be the oldest existing football stadium building in the world. The changing rooms were closed in 2013 for safety reasons. During World War II, Lesser Hampden was commandeered by the British Government to serve as a base for the Home Guard. There were proposals to convert the site back to agriculture if there were food shortages, but the ground was returned to the football club at the end of the war in 1945. During the 1970s, several Queen's Park first team games were played at the stadium. During the redevelopment of the main Hampden Park stadium in the 1990s, the club played Scottish Football League matches at this ground. The ground served as a staging area for pre-game tailgate parties hosted by the Scottish ClaymoresAmerican football team when they played at Hampden Park. During preparations to make use of the site for the 2002 UEFA Champions League Final, it was discovered that Lesser Hampden was tainted with toxic chromium, a byproduct from an old chemicals plant located in nearby Rutherglen. This was cleaned up at a cost of around £40,000. Lesser Hampden is tightly hemmed in to the west by surrounding housing and commercial developments. It has some areas of terracing, floodlights and a small covered grandstand adjacent to the original farmhouse building. The natural grass pitch was replaced with a 3rd generation astro-grass pitch and was used as a warm-up area for athletes competing in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, as the track and field events were held at Hampden Park. Since Hampden's 1999 redevelopment, a row of Portakabins on the north side of the Lesser Hampden pitch had housed the Queen's Park club offices, with a proposed rebuild of the site as an elite youth development facility never materialising. In 2013 a new clubhouse at the south-west corner was completed, named the J. B. McAlpine Pavilion to honour the club's record goalscorer.
In September 2018, it was announced that Queen's Park would return to Lesser Hampden to play first team matches on a permanent basis after agreeing to sell Hampden Park itself to the Scottish FA, which had been leasing the larger ground as the base for the national team. In November 2019, the club released plans to upgrade Lesser Hampden to an SPFL-standard venue which included an extension of the existing west stand, a new east stand and associated facilities, with a seating capacity of 1774.
