BRISTOL, England — English soccer clubs began to enclose their stadiums and charge admission in the last quarter of the 19th century. While the fans came in considerable numbers, there were those who could not pay or would not pay, or those who just spotted an opportunity to watch the games free. On moorlands overlooking stadiums or on hillocks with a view into their open corners, people have been watching the game — or the little slice of the game they could see — for more than a century.

Even in the era of the Premier League and its new arenas — self-consciously designed to maximize revenue — there are chinks in the armor. At Stoke City’s new Britannia Stadium, where the wind and cold are among the harshest in England, a small hill behind the scoreboard offers a vantage point onto most of the action. Some fans watch the whole game from there; others, those who like to beat the traffic, start inside and then do the last 10 minutes from the hill.

But this season, the best free view in any league, perhaps in the history of English soccer, belongs to a man known as East End Shed Man, who has one whole and almost unobstructed side of Ashton Gate, Bristol City’s stadium, to himself. A solitary figure in a green duffle coat and dark glasses, East End Shed Man has perched on the nearly flat roof of a large garden shed since August. He was first seen during a League One match against Oxford United, and has been a permanent fixture ever since.

The view arrived over the summer, when Bristol City demolished its much-loved but utterly dilapidated East Stand. An old cinder bank that dated to the 1920s, it was never more than a large low-roofed tin shed. But for the last few decades it had also been the noisiest, liveliest quarter of Ashton Gate, the place where the club’s most boisterous fans rubbed up against the tiny contingent of away supporters, separated only by a thin line of stewards in nuclear yellow vests that was occasionally reinforced by the black and navy of the police. They have all been replaced, temporarily, by a single man.