Wye Racecourse

[Cork All Star]

Today is the 50th anniversary of the last ever meeting at Wye racecourse.

Wye is in Kent, between Ashford and Canterbury. The racecourse was situated next to Wye station.

The course was popular with racegoers but not with jockeys. The facilities were poor. It was a tight circuit with sharp bends which were often slippery, raising health and safety concerns.

These concerns caused the course’s closure. After the 1973/74 season, the Jockey Club ordered work to be done to make the home turn safer. It also ordered an upgrade to the facilities and requested that a photo finish camera was installed.

The family which owned the course were not prepared to pay. Neither was the Levy Board. Most of Wye’s meetings were on Monday afternoons and did not generate much betting turnover.

Faced with the impasse, the Jockey Club revoked Wye’s licence. No one who attended the meeting on 2nd May 1974 knew it but it was the last meeting ever staged at Wye. Rompalong, at 6/1, earned a place in racing trivia as the last horse to win at the venue. A few months afterwards, the track’s fixtures and fittings were sold off. It is now farmland.

I wonder if any older TRF posters ever visited the course?

There is a good chapter on the course in Chris Pitt’s book “A Long Time Gone” and some more information here:

http://www.greyhoundderby.com/Wye%20Racecourse.html

[apracing]

I spent a Monday afternoon there one day in 1968. Saw Bob Champion, still an amateur then, ride the winner of the novice chase for Toby Balding. And Jimmy Uttley ride a winner over hurdles – Uttley was purely a hurdles jocckey, never rode over fences.

To say that the place was basic would be an over statement. In essence, it was a farm field with a large cowshed disguised as a grandstand. There were sheep grazing in the centre of the track, with an electrified wire fence to stop them wandering onto the course.

The course was almost a mile round, like a slightly shrunken Plumpton, uphill past the stand to the finish, downhill on the far side.

I enjoyed the train ride, but not long after I changed jobs and was working at Heathrow, so never went there again.

[Cork All Star]

Thanks, it is interesting to hear from someone who actually attended the track. I have been through Wye station on the train to Canterbury but I have not visited the site.

I saw a clip on X a few weeks ago of Sir Mark Prescott telling a very funny story of riding at Wye but unfortunately the clip seems to have disappeared.

[apracing]

CAS,

Lots of info here, including a picture that shows the ‘grandstand’.

http://www.greyhoundderby.com/Wye%20Racecourse.html

The tall man you can see in profile top left of the stand – that was the judges box!

[Cork All Star]

I find it disappointing that Wye closed due to penny pinching. If the money had been found to improve the track and the facilities, presumably racing would have continued.

According to Chris Pitt’s book, 1,800 people attended the final meeting, which was a fair sized crowd for a rural track on a Monday afternoon. It could be reached on a train directly from Charing Cross (although I suppose Folkestone could as well and that didn’t save it).

If the course had survived into the modern era, it would have benefited from media rights payments.

Maybe modern trainers would not have wanted to run horses around such a tight circuit but a track like Fakenham survived and has thrived, despite being far less accessible than Wye.

[Devonian]

I recall going there a few times on a Monday in 1971 and 1972 while at university in Canterbury. You almost seemed to get off the train platform straight onto the course.

It was indeed a tight course with difficult slippery bends and generally poor horses. I imagine it being rather similar to Buckfastleigh although I never saw races there.

Facilities were indeed primitive but quite a lot of cockneys seemed to rock up for the meetings

I can remember an old staying chaser Paddynoggin who was a decidedly dodgy jumper was a regular.

I also recall a horse that I think was called Ilikeit who had form figures of 000000 winning a selling hurdle after being backed in from long odds to 6/4. I heard a posh bloke say it was wanted today but with those form figures I was not tempted. I think Basil Richmond was the trainer.

As regards Buckfastleigh I noticed driving to Plymouth yesterday that the old derelict stand with vegetation growing out of it has finally been removed.

[Cork All Star]

Thanks for sharing your memories of Wye, Devonian.

[Devonian]

It was quite nice thinking back to those times. Wye racecourse belonged to a very different era. All too long ago sadly.

[Author]

Posts