Wasps amateur club owned their ground at Repton Avenue in Sudbury, near Harrow, having bought it in the 1920s. However it was totally unsuitable for the professional era due to size, facilities (apart from an excellent club house) and access.
There were initial plans to turn the pitch 90? and build new stands when the game went professional. Then Chris Wright offered to buy Wasps so we could play at Loftus Road and the merged QPR and Wasps entity became Loftus Road plc and floated on the Stock Market.
Wasps split into professional (Wasps RFC) and amateur (Wasps FC) organisations since the club had several sides and wished to keep that going. The amateurs still played at Sudbury and the professionals trained there. Wasps won the league in the first season of professional rugby. The Premiership was set up the next season.
Unfortunately, QPR manager Gerry Francis' uncontrolled profligate spending meant the organisation leaked money and the share value fell to zero. As a result Sudbury ground, but not the clubhouse, was sold to pay off QPR's debts and is now a housing estate. The team had to train on the public park the other side of the clubhouse since Francis wouldn't accommodate them at QPR's training ground.
Then Fulham FC were having work done at Craven Cottage and a financial inducement was offered to Wasps to move and we relocated to High Wycombe and won lots of trophies (4 league and 2 European champions) during that period.
In the meantime, Chris Wright split from QPR but ended up owing their training ground at Twyford Avenue, Acton. Wasps FC moved there permanently and the professionals were based and trained there.
Chris Wright had to sell the club eventually and Steve Hayes bought it and Wycombe Wanderers with a plan to develop a former airfield into a sports and retail park with a new stadium close to the M40 but his applications were thrown out by the local council and he walked away.
At this point Wasps secured a bonus point loss on the last day of the season to avoid relegation and were pursued by HMRC for tax. Wasps FC came up with the money at the last minute (almost literally) and a former player lead a consortium which ended with Derek Richardson buying the club.
Derek realised owning the ground was key to revenue and ended up buying the Ricoh Arena in Coventry, which also had conference and exhibition halls, hotel and casino. Unfortunately he did not have enough wealth to do this and keep funding the club so he initiated an ambitious, but ill-fated, scheme to sell bonds to fund the stadium purchase. At the same time, Sisu the Coventry City owners, were attempting to scupper the purchase through endless legal actions. Then we had the pandemic and downturn of the economy
The culmination of all of this was the club had no money and huge debts and went into administration.