merse
TFF member
Posts: 2,684
|
Post by merse on May 27, 2009 17:19:41 GMT
I wish I could have spent more time with Reg Chapple a man who is best described as a Merse, only 20 plus years older, a man who could recall such detail and names from the past, mind you as is so often the case, he could not remember my name from last week. ~ "Thanks Derek!"  Reg also talked about the Petitor racecourse, and Barton did a great piece on this for us, but he felt a little troubled due to an article about the racecourse that was in the HE a few weeks ago. It claimed the course was closed around 1942, yet Reg believes this can’t be the case, unless his mind is playing tricks on him. Merse has he writes is leaving so much of his memories that others might read long after he has gone, not that he is allowed to go anywhere for at least another 25 years and when he is on his deathbed, I want someone to get him near a PC to fill in the bits he has missed out so far  Torquay Racecourse staged it's final days racing on Easter Monday, March 25th, 1940....................the 8,733 people who went along would not have been aware that it would turn out this way but unfortunately racing had to stop because of the hostilities and in 1943 the grandstand was destroyed in the same bombing raid that brought such death and destruction on the neighbouring church and with re-building costs proving prohibitive, it was pulled down after the war and on the resumption of racing in peace time the Easter Monday meeting was transferred to Newton Abbot. Surprisingly it was only in 1993 that the clause permitting closure of the golf course to accommodate racing was rescinded! Thanks for retaining some of my posts in perpetuity Dave, I don't plan on going anywhere just yet; but you never know! |
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 27, 2009 19:20:48 GMT
Dave, lovely account of your meeting with Reg. Here's something else for him:  |
|
|
|
Post by stuartB on May 27, 2009 19:48:15 GMT
Put me in a room with a 79 year old man who wants to share his memories and I will just sit and listen Have you been around to Chelston's house?  |
|
|
|
Post by phipsy on May 27, 2009 22:02:58 GMT
thank you barton for printing the photo of the old watcombe GULLS cycle speedway track.
although very young at the time i didn/t miss a match.
the matches were against amongst others,torquay pirates-----who rode at the quarry beneath walls hill, teignmouth tigers,shaldon kestrels and heathfield panthers.
the gulls were captained by doc haddrell and the star rider was derek barnett .others to ride from memory was the unforgettable ted mills and glyn corderoy.
cycle speedway was a short lived popularity lasting just a few years.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 28, 2009 12:23:51 GMT
Phipsy, thanks for that. The cycle speedway track at Watcombe is a real eye-opener to me. All I can remember is being taken over to around there for "the clinic" as a very small child (1958-59 ish) Can you remember when all this happened? The Torbay Century book - from where the picture comes - says 1950s.
Just doing a little bit of research it appears that the sport boomed on London's bomb sites after WW2 - featuring "skid kids" - and soon spread to other parts of the country. There were thousands of clubs before the sport faded in the 1950s.
|
|
|
|
Post by phipsy on May 28, 2009 16:20:03 GMT
barton, i can fairly safely say that the watcombe gulls were operating from probably1952 till 1955.
i am willing to be corrected on that.
i moved from barton to shiphay in dec 1954 and sort of lost touch with the happenings in watcombe.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on May 28, 2009 20:59:33 GMT
|
|
merse
TFF member
Posts: 2,684
|
Post by merse on May 29, 2009 2:50:13 GMT
Amazing how such a simple and popular sport should evolve and then virtually disappear in little over half a century. I notice there is a track still in the little park at Custom House beside the A13 which is where the old West Ham speedway stadium used to be, and who remembers the Shaldon Kestrels run for so many years by Ron Vaulter from Stokeinteignhead who was also the mentor responsible for Shaldon Villa ~ such a productive youth football club in the times of my youth? Quiet, polite and eloquent of speech, Ron worked as a guard on the railways based at Newton Abbot and was a man I held in great esteem for his commitment to the welfare of the local youth of the Teign Estuary. I never tried Cycle Speedway myself, but we used to customise our bikes with "Cow Horn" handlebars and tear around a makeshift little track on the common land beside Milber Woods roughly where Ash Way now runs...........................and cycle speedway tracks are indeed little ~ usually measuring just over 100 metres in circumference. I was told of the sport's booming fifties history in the East End of London by an old boy once and he regaled me with tales of five figure crowds, unofficial "bookies" running off with the takings rather than stay and pay out, and the old East End custom of "nobbins" whereby the appreciative punters would hurl spare change onto the track for the riders to scrabble around and pick up for themselves at the end of a hard evening's racing. Bartie's cutting relevant to the "Boom Years of the East End" certainly give credence to that old boy's tale which was given to me at the now gone (under the Olympic Park bulldozers) Eastway Cycle Circuit ~ a one mile road racing facility complete with hills switchback bends and photo finish equipment.........................another great venue of competitive and cut throat sport such as one would never imagine if one had never seen it for themselves!
|
|
