Racecourses

Synonymous with the King George VI Chase, staged annually on Boxing Day, Kempton Park is situated on the A308, known locally as Staines Road East, in Sunbury-on-Thames, Surrey. At a distance of 16 miles, it has the distinction of being the closest racecourse to the City of London and, since the Flat turf course was replaced with Polytrack in 2006, has become one of the busiest courses in the country.

A right-handed, practically flat course, Kempton Park was established in 1878, by the recently-incorporated Kempton Park Race Course Company Limited. The company actually had seven original shareholders, but just one of them, Samuel Henry Hyde, is generally considered the founding father of the racecourse. The first meeting at Kempton Park was held on July 18, 1878.

Sandown Park, on the other hand, is situated on Portsmouth Road in Esher, Surrey, approximately six miles southeast of Kempton Park and approximately 17 miles southwest of the City of London. Nowadays, Sandown is renowned as the home of the Coral-Eclipse, which was inaugurated in 1886, at the time under the auspices of Leopold de Rothschild, and the Bet365 Gold Cup, formerly the Whitbread Gold Cup, which was established in 1957.

An essentially galloping course, with a stiff uphill finish, Sandown had the distinction of being the first modern, purpose-built racecourse in the country and the first to charge an admission fee (of half a crown, or 2/6, which is the equivalent of approximately £8 in modern terms). Under the auspices of Sir Wilford Brett, the brother of Sir William Brett (later Viscount Esher), and brothers Owen and Hwfa Williams, Sandown Park was developed on farmland attached to Sandown House. The first race meeting at the venue took place on April 22, 1875.

In short, the ‘viaduct side’ is a feature of Chester Racecourse in Cheshire, North West England. Established in 1539, Chester has the distinction of being the oldest racecourse still in operation anywhere in the world and its sharp, left-handed circuit, which is just over a mile in circumference, is the smallest in Britain. The racecourse site occupies 65 acres on the northern bank of the River Dee and flanks the Chester City Walls along the eastern edge.

The northwestern side of the course, though, is dominated by a striking feat of Victorian engineering, in the form of the Roodee Viaduct. The viaduct, which measures 108 feet in length, was built, along with the nearby Dee Bridge, in the middle of the nineteenth century to carry the Chester-Holyhead railway line across the River Dee. The original, cast iron Dee Bridge was opened for local traffic in 1846, but the following May was the site of the Dee Bridge disaster, when a locomotive plunged into the river, resulting in the death of five people and serious injury to nine more.

The Dee Bridge was subsequently rebuilt using wrought iron lattice girders, but the Roodee Viaduct has stood the test of time. Of course, Chester Racecourse is on the turn almost throughout, but the viaduct runs parallel to the course from the chute that marks the 7 furlongs and 122 yards start to the 6 furlong and 18 yards start, at which point the course turns eastward to run along the banks of the River Dee. Of course, from a practical point of view, the Roodee Viaduct and the refurbished Dee Bridge link Chester Racecourse with Curzon Park, a residential suburb on the southerm banks of the Dee. Nevertheless, the Roodee Viaduct remains an instantly recognisable landmark in the Roodee landscape.

According to the ‘Racing Calendar’ or, more correctly, its predecessor, ‘An Historical List All Horses-Matches Run’, which was first published in 1727, the history of horse racing in the vicinity of Bath dates back to 1728. Initially, meetings took place at Claverton Down, to the south-east of the city centre and approximately 20 miles from the site of the modern racecourse on Lansdown Hill, where they were staged, intermittently, until 1784. At that point, meetings were transferred to Lansdown, not to the existing site, but to one between where Beckford’s Tower, an architectural folly built in 1827, now stands and the thoroughfare knowm as Weston Lane.

Race meetings at Lansdown, though, remained irregular and ceased altogther between 1796 and 1811, with Napolean Bonparte, who came to power in 1799, attempting to wage ecomic warfare against the British Empire and, indeed, threatening to invade Britain itself, during the Napoleonic Wars. When racing resumed, it was still anything but a regular occurence, with just one, two-day meeting staged annually in May. The year 1823 saw the inauguration of the Somersetshire Stakes, which become the feature race of the day and was, at one point, a recognised trial for the Derby. Won by Tudor Minstrel – the joint-third highest-rated racehorse in the history of Timeform – in 1947, the race was eventually discontinued in 1998, but resurrected in 2011, as part of bicentennial celebrations.

In 1831, the Bath Racecourse was moved to its current location, 780 feet above sea level on the Lansdown Plateau, which gave it the distinction of being the highest Flat racing venue in the country, which it remains to this day. Indeed, of all the racecourses in the United Kingdom, only Exeter and Hexham, at heights of 850 and 800 feet above sea level, respectively, are higher than Bath.

Following the end of World War I, during which racing ceased, the Lansdown Estate changed hands, leading to speculation about the continued success of Bath Racecourse. However, erstwhile directors of the Newbury Racecourse Company, formed in 1904, had faith in the facility and banded together to buy it, at public auction, leading to the incorporation of the Bath Racecourse Company in 1919. Thus, racing at Bath continued throughout the interwar years, but during World War II the course became an airfield for the Royal Air Force (RAF), named RAF North Stoke.

In 1953, Bath Raceourse was the scene of the infamous ‘Francasal Affair’, in which a gang of fraudsters attempted to swindle bookmakers out of £60,000, or nearly £1.4 million by modern standards, based on Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation data. The plot essentially involved substituting a filly named Francasal with a useful French horse named Santa Amaro, cutting the telephone lines to the racecourse, to prevent communication between on-course and off-course bookmakers, and heavily backing the ‘ringer’ at odds of 10/1. Subsequent investigations by the General Post Office (GPO) and the police led to the arrest of five men, who were tried, twice, at the Old Bailey and four of whom were convicted and jailed for conspiracy to defraud.

Nowadays, Bath Racecourse is part of Arena Racing Company (ARC), who, as Northern Racing, acquired the property in 2000. In 2015/16 ARC funded a multi-million-pound redevelopment of the racecourse infrastructure and facilities, thereby creating a modern venue, which, nonetheless reflects the history and heritage of the site. The principal race – and, indeed, the only Pattern race of the year – at Bath is the Listed Lansdown Fillies’ Stakes, inaugurated in 1999 and run annually, over 5 furlongs and 10 yards, in April. Perhaps the most notable winner was Cassandra Go, trained by Geoff Wragg, who supplemented her victory in 2000 by winning both the Temple Stakes at Sandown Park and the King’s Stand Stakes at Royal Ascot the following season.

The history of horse racing in and around Redcar can be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century, when an annual meeting was held on the firm, flat sands of Coatham Beach, a mile or so to the north of the site of the present racecourse. Despite basic, temporary facilities and poor prize money, the annual meeting was well attended, not least because spectators could watch the action admission-free. Lack of gate money only became a problem when the Jockey Club decreed that all horse races must offer at least £50 in prize money, thereby rendering the meeting unviable, financially.

Consequently, a consortium led by John Hikeley, proprietor of the Lobster Inn, petitioned Arthur Henry Turner Newcomen, a member of one of the oldest families in the North Riding of Yorkshire, with a view to leasing land in the grounds of his family seat, Kirkleatham Hall, initially for a period of 21 years. Thus, the modern racecourse, which now occupies 72 acres, was created on Redcar Lane, in the heart of the Tees Valley town. The last meeting on Coatham Beach took place in 1870 and the first meeting on the new, inland course was staged in 1872, with admission to the grandstand enclosure costing a princely 6/-, or approximately £28 by modern standards, accounting for inflation.

Under the auspices of the Redcar and Coatham Company, the first permanent grandstand was erected in 1876. The racecourse was largely neglected in the first half of the twentieth century – l

due, in no small part, to closure during both world wars – but its fortunes revived under the newly-appointed Clerk of the Course, Major Leslie Petch, from 1946 onwards. With financial support from the Horserace Betting Levy Board (HBLB), a new grandstand, which still stands, was erected in 1964. Control of the racecourse subsequently passed to Lawrence Mark Dundas, Marquess of Zetland, in 1981, and to International Racecourse Management (IRM), run by John Sanderson, the nephew of Major Leslie Petch, in 1996.