In just over a week, I will reach another of those significant birthdays. I have written before that I don’t make a particularly big thing about celebrating such things, but this birthday will also (almost) coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of my first visit to a motor race, at Brands Hatch, which you can read about here, if you are so inclined.
It was also at Brands Hatch, as a result of the encouragement of Brian Jones, that I first became involved in public address commentary, and the place has always been close to my heart. Chas Parker, in his excellent book on the history of Brands Hatch, describes it as Britain’s best-loved motor-racing circuit and he does have a point.
For those wanting all the details, then I can do no more than recommend Chas’s book, which is still available and not overly expensive. However, as I have not found the following piece posted anywhere else on the internet – I’m not saying it’s not out there, just that I couldn’t find it – I thought I would share it here.
It is taken from the official programme of the RAC British Grand Prix, 1966, and is written by Duncan Measor*, Motor Sport Correspondent of the Manchester Evening News.
FROM GRASS TRACK TO GRAND PRIX
The most powerful pair of legs in Kent swung over a farm fence and picked a careful path through the dense crop of mushrooms. It was the moment that began all that we see here today, for the broad-shouldered, barrel-chested youth who stopped where the meadowland dipped into a natural amphitheatre was walking into history – just as he has slipped quietly out of it.
From that memorable moment the seed was planted which was to grow into Brands Hatch, the great circuit which is known throughout the world wherever enthusiasts talk about racing machines. The Army had stamped and manoeuvred its noisy, grass-crushing way around those fields. Now it had gone the white Brands Hatch farmhouse stood silent again in the undulating meadowland… until Ron Argent, a 9s-a-week engineering apprentice, and his fellow cyclists stopped that day in 1926 and saw the potentiality of this land beside the main road from London to Maidstone. With the farmer’s permission, they started to use the Brands Hatch ‘bowl’ for cycle racing and pacemaking. The idea caught on rapidly and soon cyclists from 50 miles around were making it their Sunday Mecca. An afternoon of furious cycling would end with them sitting on the grass with their families and having tea served by an old couple who turned an Army hut into a café.
Jimmy Newson, a venerable pioneer of Woolwich Cycling Club, recalled the first experimental speed event at Brands Hatch – a four-mile race between cyclists and cross-country runners. The runners won. Peter Barnett, of Belvedere, Kent, another club member, told me: “The ‘Hatch’ was covered in mole-hills and many hours were spent chopping off the tops. The world champion, Jackie Hoobin, of Australia, raced there. We used two-thirds of the present straight, Paddock Bend, down the hill and returned parallel to the straight.”
No sound of engines broke the silence of Brands in those days but already its history of breeding champions had started. Ron Argent, now a wealthy businessman with a hotel in Wateringbury and an engineering factory and seven cycle and motorcycle shops in the Maidstone area, became the first and most famous of the cycling aces. From 1933 to 1939 he was the unbeatable cycling champion of Kent, winning 70 trophies and many of them at Brands Hatch.
By 1928, the motorcycle boys were interested and when the cyclists wheeled their machines away for tea the bowl became a grass-track. “I remember thinking”, Ron told me, “that as we first looked around the finest mushroom crop in the area, there was something about the shape and situation of this land which made it a natural race track. Several of us had the feeling that what we were starting was going to keep on growing – but we never envisaged that it would become so fantastically successful.”
With the dark clouds of 1939 back came the Army and out went the regular residents – but the motorcycles roared back in force as soon as the war ended and there was petrol to be saved for sport.
By now the land that had been pock-marked with rabbit warrens, violated by Army vehicles and developed eczema through its dry underskin of chalk, was still further scarred by bomb craters. But there was no denying the keenness of the helmeted devotees who incorporated the craters in their track and turned it into the finest and most famous grass circuit in Britain, so much so that in 1947 it became organised as a commercial proposition when Brands Hatch Stadium (later Circuit) Ltd., began to run it.
But on a bitterly cold day early in 1949 a new sound was heard – the deafening hammer of 500cc engines in chunky little racing cars. Out on to the rutted motorcycle track went a straggling line of enthusiasts with a great idea. Among them was the fiery scramble ace Ken Carter, now a Sidcup estate agent; a youthful John Cooper (in a Cooper, of course); Ian Smith, now chairman of the British Racing and Sports Car Club which, as the 500 Club, made Brands Hatch its home circuit and blasted its name into the headlines; and Ken Gregory, a mainstay of the Club in its early years.
It was Ken who later worked ceaselessly with other officials of the Club and with Joe Francis, then managing director of Brands Hatch, to arrange for the first car race there. And he is always generous in his praise of Stan Coldham, the driver who first tipped off the club that the circuit they were needing was in striking distance of London.
But what of that first car trial? “We all thought it could be used for pure track racing”, said Ian Smith. The historic decision was taken and that year £14,000 was spent on laying a one-mile tarmacadam track – but the first intention, before the 500 boys pricked up their ears, was that it should be used primarily for motorcycles.
On April 16, 1950, the half-litre bangers rolled out on to the new track – and 10,000 people turned up to see the circuit’s first and thrilling car race. Ken Carter, Don Parker and Bill Whitehouse won races and a happy John Cooper, with his family’s cars among the winners, recalls: “It was really a homely club affair”. “It was just a big garden party compared with today’s highly-organised meetings”, said Ian Smith. “If a car broke down the driver would chat over the fence until the race ended.”
The greatest racing-driver nursery in the world had been born and at the head of the 500cc ‘babes’ who were to learn their racing in elbow-to-elbow scraps round the exacting Brands ‘kidney’ was to be Stirling Moss. Next came a move which made the circuit unique among British tracks – and all because housing developers took over Northolt pony-trotting course.
Representatives of Brands Hatch and the BRSCC called at the defunct track, bought a stand “at a bargain figure” and had it taken down with every girder numbered and then reassembled to give Brands Hatch the first Continental-style permanent grandstand in the country. A year later every marshal was linked by telephone to race control and the finest track hospital in Britain was fitted out, even to an operating theatre.
The rest is modern history known to all knowledgeable fans… in the winter of 1959/60 the circuit was extended to 2.65 miles and, a year later, the new owners, Grovewood Securities Ltd. began to pour in money for facilities to increase the comfort and safety for spectators and drivers.
All the years of work and foresight paid off in 1964, when the highest accolade was awarded – the staging of the British and European Grand Prix. A huge crowd saw one of the most thrilling and close-fought classic races of all time with Jim Clark’s Lotus just pipping Graham Hill’s BRM by less than three seconds after 212 miles.
Today sees history being written once more in the shattering roar of massed 3-litre cars handled by the world’s finest drivers. It is the first British Grand Prix to be held under the new formula which has doubled the capacity of the engines.
And as the lions scarl down in the colourful arena and the twentieth-century gladiators prepare to do battle here this afternoon, it is worth giving perhaps more than a passing thought to how it all began… back to the day in 1926 when a bunch of ruddy-cheeked cyclists, on their way home after a 150-mile ‘spin’, stopped to contemplate a field whose only claim to fame had been its mushrooms.
Barely nine months after this graceful prose appeared in print, my parents took me to Brands for my birthday treat, and I attach below a photo from our family archive. For good measure, I have included another, again from the Race of Champions, and then one that I found on the internet and simply could not resist! Thank you for your indulgence.
*Measor died in 2009, at the age of 84.
It was also at Brands Hatch, as a result of the encouragement of Brian Jones, that I first became involved in public address commentary, and the place has always been close to my heart. Chas Parker, in his excellent book on the history of Brands Hatch, describes it as Britain’s best-loved motor-racing circuit and he does have a point.
For those wanting all the details, then I can do no more than recommend Chas’s book, which is still available and not overly expensive. However, as I have not found the following piece posted anywhere else on the internet – I’m not saying it’s not out there, just that I couldn’t find it – I thought I would share it here.
It is taken from the official programme of the RAC British Grand Prix, 1966, and is written by Duncan Measor*, Motor Sport Correspondent of the Manchester Evening News.
FROM GRASS TRACK TO GRAND PRIX
The most powerful pair of legs in Kent swung over a farm fence and picked a careful path through the dense crop of mushrooms. It was the moment that began all that we see here today, for the broad-shouldered, barrel-chested youth who stopped where the meadowland dipped into a natural amphitheatre was walking into history – just as he has slipped quietly out of it.
From that memorable moment the seed was planted which was to grow into Brands Hatch, the great circuit which is known throughout the world wherever enthusiasts talk about racing machines. The Army had stamped and manoeuvred its noisy, grass-crushing way around those fields. Now it had gone the white Brands Hatch farmhouse stood silent again in the undulating meadowland… until Ron Argent, a 9s-a-week engineering apprentice, and his fellow cyclists stopped that day in 1926 and saw the potentiality of this land beside the main road from London to Maidstone. With the farmer’s permission, they started to use the Brands Hatch ‘bowl’ for cycle racing and pacemaking. The idea caught on rapidly and soon cyclists from 50 miles around were making it their Sunday Mecca. An afternoon of furious cycling would end with them sitting on the grass with their families and having tea served by an old couple who turned an Army hut into a café.
Jimmy Newson, a venerable pioneer of Woolwich Cycling Club, recalled the first experimental speed event at Brands Hatch – a four-mile race between cyclists and cross-country runners. The runners won. Peter Barnett, of Belvedere, Kent, another club member, told me: “The ‘Hatch’ was covered in mole-hills and many hours were spent chopping off the tops. The world champion, Jackie Hoobin, of Australia, raced there. We used two-thirds of the present straight, Paddock Bend, down the hill and returned parallel to the straight.”
No sound of engines broke the silence of Brands in those days but already its history of breeding champions had started. Ron Argent, now a wealthy businessman with a hotel in Wateringbury and an engineering factory and seven cycle and motorcycle shops in the Maidstone area, became the first and most famous of the cycling aces. From 1933 to 1939 he was the unbeatable cycling champion of Kent, winning 70 trophies and many of them at Brands Hatch.
By 1928, the motorcycle boys were interested and when the cyclists wheeled their machines away for tea the bowl became a grass-track. “I remember thinking”, Ron told me, “that as we first looked around the finest mushroom crop in the area, there was something about the shape and situation of this land which made it a natural race track. Several of us had the feeling that what we were starting was going to keep on growing – but we never envisaged that it would become so fantastically successful.”
With the dark clouds of 1939 back came the Army and out went the regular residents – but the motorcycles roared back in force as soon as the war ended and there was petrol to be saved for sport.
By now the land that had been pock-marked with rabbit warrens, violated by Army vehicles and developed eczema through its dry underskin of chalk, was still further scarred by bomb craters. But there was no denying the keenness of the helmeted devotees who incorporated the craters in their track and turned it into the finest and most famous grass circuit in Britain, so much so that in 1947 it became organised as a commercial proposition when Brands Hatch Stadium (later Circuit) Ltd., began to run it.
But on a bitterly cold day early in 1949 a new sound was heard – the deafening hammer of 500cc engines in chunky little racing cars. Out on to the rutted motorcycle track went a straggling line of enthusiasts with a great idea. Among them was the fiery scramble ace Ken Carter, now a Sidcup estate agent; a youthful John Cooper (in a Cooper, of course); Ian Smith, now chairman of the British Racing and Sports Car Club which, as the 500 Club, made Brands Hatch its home circuit and blasted its name into the headlines; and Ken Gregory, a mainstay of the Club in its early years.
It was Ken who later worked ceaselessly with other officials of the Club and with Joe Francis, then managing director of Brands Hatch, to arrange for the first car race there. And he is always generous in his praise of Stan Coldham, the driver who first tipped off the club that the circuit they were needing was in striking distance of London.
But what of that first car trial? “We all thought it could be used for pure track racing”, said Ian Smith. The historic decision was taken and that year £14,000 was spent on laying a one-mile tarmacadam track – but the first intention, before the 500 boys pricked up their ears, was that it should be used primarily for motorcycles.
On April 16, 1950, the half-litre bangers rolled out on to the new track – and 10,000 people turned up to see the circuit’s first and thrilling car race. Ken Carter, Don Parker and Bill Whitehouse won races and a happy John Cooper, with his family’s cars among the winners, recalls: “It was really a homely club affair”. “It was just a big garden party compared with today’s highly-organised meetings”, said Ian Smith. “If a car broke down the driver would chat over the fence until the race ended.”
The greatest racing-driver nursery in the world had been born and at the head of the 500cc ‘babes’ who were to learn their racing in elbow-to-elbow scraps round the exacting Brands ‘kidney’ was to be Stirling Moss. Next came a move which made the circuit unique among British tracks – and all because housing developers took over Northolt pony-trotting course.
Representatives of Brands Hatch and the BRSCC called at the defunct track, bought a stand “at a bargain figure” and had it taken down with every girder numbered and then reassembled to give Brands Hatch the first Continental-style permanent grandstand in the country. A year later every marshal was linked by telephone to race control and the finest track hospital in Britain was fitted out, even to an operating theatre.
The rest is modern history known to all knowledgeable fans… in the winter of 1959/60 the circuit was extended to 2.65 miles and, a year later, the new owners, Grovewood Securities Ltd. began to pour in money for facilities to increase the comfort and safety for spectators and drivers.
All the years of work and foresight paid off in 1964, when the highest accolade was awarded – the staging of the British and European Grand Prix. A huge crowd saw one of the most thrilling and close-fought classic races of all time with Jim Clark’s Lotus just pipping Graham Hill’s BRM by less than three seconds after 212 miles.
Today sees history being written once more in the shattering roar of massed 3-litre cars handled by the world’s finest drivers. It is the first British Grand Prix to be held under the new formula which has doubled the capacity of the engines.
And as the lions scarl down in the colourful arena and the twentieth-century gladiators prepare to do battle here this afternoon, it is worth giving perhaps more than a passing thought to how it all began… back to the day in 1926 when a bunch of ruddy-cheeked cyclists, on their way home after a 150-mile ‘spin’, stopped to contemplate a field whose only claim to fame had been its mushrooms.
Barely nine months after this graceful prose appeared in print, my parents took me to Brands for my birthday treat, and I attach below a photo from our family archive. For good measure, I have included another, again from the Race of Champions, and then one that I found on the internet and simply could not resist! Thank you for your indulgence.
*Measor died in 2009, at the age of 84.
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| 1967 Race of Champions - my first race! |
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| Jackie Stewart wins in 1970 |
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| Much later - the other side of the fence! |
