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According to the RP, Lincoln Racecourse could be making an unexpected return. I am too young to remember this track, but I do know that the last thing we need in the Midlands is a tinpot Arena racecourse, complete with hospitality for the exchange in-play layers, running claimers and maiden handicaps for £1750. I keep an open mind.
Does anyone know who is putting the money into this project ?
As long as it’s not John Holmes, I guess we’ve got half a chance.
We don’t, but the dosier on their website says there’ll be a maximum of 16 racedays a year, so perhaps the emphasis will be on quality ?
We don’t, but the dosier on their website says there’ll be a maximum of 16 racedays a year, so perhaps the emphasis will be on quality ?
I think you may be being optimistic there. Exeter, for example, have 16 meetings a year but how many would you call quality?
Also where would the 16 fixtures come from? Would they be new, or from another course?
Living very close to Lincoln, I really hope they open up the course and develop it. These are for purely selfish reasons, for sure. I don’t see how they’ll do it though. The road into Lincoln which passes between the stand and the course is far too busy to shut on racedays and the course is cut through at the 3f pole by the Lincoln by-pass, so how will it work? Also with the course being a sole 1m straight, no racing will be further than this due to there not being a round course.
We don’t need another racecourse but it’s worth remembering that this is not an ‘extra’ course being proposed. With Great Leighs unlikely to ever open again, there will simply be the same number of courses that the BHA appeared to be happy with in 2008.
From a local economic point of view, if it were to be a success it would do much good to the city of Lincoln.
It’s unlikely to happen though. Peel Holdings had planned to build a racecourse in Salford but that scheme fell by the wayside. And if Peel Holdings, who seem to own half of Manchester, can’t make a financial case for a new racecourse in England’s (arguably) third city; Lincoln & their backers have no chance.
Living very close to Lincoln, I really hope they open up the course and develop it. These are for purely selfish reasons, for sure. I don’t see how they’ll do it though. The road into Lincoln which passes between the stand and the course is far too busy to shut on racedays and the course is cut through at the 3f pole by the Lincoln by-pass, so how will it work?
That’s going to prove quite hard to surmount, yes. Regardless of whether the bypass was already there when the course closed originally in 1964 (and I suspect it wasn’t), the weight of traffic on the roads in, through and around Lincoln has increased exponentially in the interim. It’s hard to imagine how a meeting could take place without paralysing the road network for, at a guess, at least a 10-mile radius for the duration.
Also with the course being a sole 1m straight, no racing will be further than this due to there not being a round course.
Despite no longer being railed out, the ground that constituted the round course at Lincoln does actually still survive intact, and a resumption of racing at the Carholme as just a flattish, left-hand oval would be the easiest to effect.
Remember that this was the venue of up to three point-to-point meetings a year between 1967 and 1990, and they may well have remained there to this day had the Burton, Blankney and Grove & Rufford hunts not left en masse. The catalyst for that exodus was the then Labour City Council insisting that all pointing meetings on the site from 1991 onwards were to raise money for the mayor’s charity instead of the presiding hunts, and that any clothing or paraphernalia relating to hunting was to be forbidden.
You can imagine how that was received. All three hunts decamped to Market Rasen instantly, and nowadays race instead at Welbeck (Grove & Rufford) and North Carlton (the other two).
More information regarding the course’s two demises is available, inevitably, in Chris Pitt’s peerless "A Long Time Gone". He appears to regret racing no longer taking place at the Carholme, and so do I, as the place was dealt a bad hand firstly by Levy Board thuggery and latterly by local government fecklessness. All in all, though, whilst I’d love to see the course resurrected more than some of the previous posters above, I’d struggle to see how that’s going to happen any time soon.
gc
Jeremy Grayson. Son of immigrant. Adoptive father of two. Metadata librarian. Freelance point-to-point / horse racing writer, analyst and commentator wonk. Loves music, buses, cats, the BBC Micro, ale. Advocate of CBT, PACE and therapeutic parenting. Aspergers.
Can someone put my mind at ease about something?
Was Lincoln racecourse ever known as Hurst Park?
I’m sure I read that somewhere but I may have imagined it.
Hurst Park was at Molesey, on the banks of the River Thames, near to Kempton and Sandown.
Hurst Park was at Molesey, on the banks of the River Thames, near to Kempton and Sandown.
Thanks.
All I remember is that Mansfield Town FC bought the grandstand from one of them.
Transported it piece by piece.
Hurst Park was at Molesey, on the banks of the River Thames, near to Kempton and Sandown.
Thanks.
All I remember is that Mansfield Town FC bought the grandstand from one of them.
Transported it piece by piece.
Must have been Hurst Park because I stood in the Grandstand when the Carholme was used for pointing. A good enough venue but the bushes made the viewing difficult and the going was always patchy at best. they would have to sort that out for a start.
Not sure I would welcome it back.
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