Post by Deleted on Jan 21, 2009 17:08:45 GMT
A few more pictures of horse racing at Petitor taken from a book I've recently been kindly lent: the Pictorial and Historical Survey of Babbacombe and St Marychurch published in 1980 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the local traders and hoteliers association.
The first two are taken on the course itself and date from 1938:
This one, looking towards the course, is taken from what is described as Lummaton Downs. The racecourse area is in the top-right of the picture. Move the camera position forward and downhill a few yards - then add a few decades - and it's effectively the view from our backdoor with which I grew up. The cottages in the foreground, which I always believed were built for quarry workers, are on Happaway Road:
This view, continued to the right, is basically an earlier version of what we saw from our front room. The racecourse/golf course is now in the top-left hand corner with Teignmouth Road, Western Road, Park Road and the churches clearly visible:
The first two are taken on the course itself and date from 1938:
This one, looking towards the course, is taken from what is described as Lummaton Downs. The racecourse area is in the top-right of the picture. Move the camera position forward and downhill a few yards - then add a few decades - and it's effectively the view from our backdoor with which I grew up. The cottages in the foreground, which I always believed were built for quarry workers, are on Happaway Road:
This view, continued to the right, is basically an earlier version of what we saw from our front room. The racecourse/golf course is now in the top-left hand corner with Teignmouth Road, Western Road, Park Road and the churches clearly visible:
What a strange configeration Torquay Racecourse was: A "right handed" course, the horses would have come thundering down from Petitor, turned right in front of the grandstand; carried on out to the left parallel with the Teignmouth Road, right up the side of Easterfield Lane before turning back on themselves to enter the finishing chute and pass the winning post in front of the stands in the opposite direction to which they had just passed. God help any real stragglers who might have risked getting hit head on by the winner!