Lewes Racecourse might well have been the oldest in the country if it hadn’t been closed in 1964.
Races are recorded as having been run there from as early as 1725 but many close to the racetrack believe it hosted race meetings many years before that in1702.
The Prince Regent spent a great deal of time there during the early 19th century and was a main attraction, swelling the crowds, as spectators joined true racing buffs to catch sight of the Royals as they enjoyed a day’s racing.
Lewes wasn’t some backwater course either. Although it was deemed a tough track by experts, top riders of their day such as Sir Gordon Richards and Lester Piggott regularly appeared on the race card and two Derby winners raced there in The King’s Plate. Unbeaten Eclipse, considered the best racehorse of all time, ran in 1769, Waxy in 1795 and Cardinal Beaufort in 1805.
The course almost closed in the mid-1800s, but the coming of the railway saved it and big crowds came to the three day meetings held in Lewes.
But perversely, it was not the racehorses that had the biggest claim to fame. It’s most remembered as the scene of a battle royal between Peaky Blinders type gangs and the Lewes police.
In his acclaimed novel ‘Brighton Rock’, writer Graham Greene describes a fictitious gang fight on Brighton Racecourse. Richard Attenborough played the part of small time hood Pinkie in the film.
Local folklore has it that the uproar was not at Brighton but at Lewes.
They have a good case because there was a furious gang fight on Lewes Race course between two gangs and Lewes police.
The real ‘Peaky Blinders’, made famous in a recent television series were violent gangsters of the 1920s.Their replacements a decade later, equally violent and nasty hoodlums, had terrorised race courses up and down the country after the First World War, robbing bookmakers and attacking police.
On a sunny June day in 1936 forty of them appeared at Lewes Racecourse.
This time, not only did they plan to relieve the bookies of their takings, but also had plans to wreak vengeance on a rival gang.
Stupidly, they walked in a bunch from the car park, unknowingly signalling to two plain clothes coppers who they were. The police followed them, aware that the thugs had attacked and maimed policemen at other tracks.
As they set about one bookmaker, the second gang attacked and into this mayhem stormed the two very brave officers.
Panicking because they thought there was a much larger police presence, the gang fled the course, hotly pursued by the two policemen.
If it hadn’t been so serious, it would have been comical as sixteen of the gang were rounded up, at one point jumping piggyback on one of the felons, before getting uniformed help to manhandle them to the cells, down the hill in Lewes
The trial made headlines, not only because two notorious gang leaders were among those caught, but also because heavy bribes were offered to the police to change their testimony.
When that failed, the gangs tried intimidation, issuing death threats and appearing en masse in the public gallery at Lewes Crown Court.
Once again the police acted with courage and faced down a baying mob in front of the court who were threatening to lynch them.
But the sentences totalling forty three and a half years handed out to sixteen of their fellow gang members meant the police were left unmolested.
This battle between police and hoodlum stopped the gang attacks on racecourses. The reign of terror was over, and it was this ruckus that did it.
A good part of the racecourse is still there. There are four racing stables still operating and the grandstand is still recognisable, even though it has been converted into private houses.
The grave of the 1921 Grand National champion Shaun Spadah is next to the track, the ashes of jockey Dick Rees scattered over it.
But apart from training gallops, it is a ghost course now. The thud of straining, panting horses is stilled, the roar of the crowd as the horses near the winning post no longer echoing over the turf.
It also sadly means though that a very thriving industry left Lewes.
There were some sixty commercial stables in the town during the 1960s, providing local employment. Pubs and hotels thrived because of the industry. The town was packed on race days and traffic crawled through the narrow streets.
Crowds sometimes numbered over 10,000, and the cash which had not been left in the bookies bags, was ploughed back into the town.
But it was the crowded streets, jammed with vehicles, making movement nigh impossible that contributed to the demise of the track.
Because it was ancient and because it was up on the Downs, sources of water and power were limited. The infrastructure required for modern racegoers was absent and the cost of providing them prohibitive, and financial support from the racing authorities had ceased.
So the shutters came down and Lewes Racecourse was no more.
But go up there on the Downs and the atmosphere of a big race occasion still pervades the air, the calm of the countryside almost begs the imagination to hear the call to the post, the cry of the starter as his flag whips down to set the horses off on their run and the murmur increasing to a roar of the crowd, urging on their favourite.
Blink and it disappears, yet romantically, over the rise in the remaining grass straight is a peculiar cloud formation, or is it? Yes. No. Yes. It’s not a cloud, but some strange shapes.
Ahhh. Ghost riders in the Sky.
It’s most remembered as the scene of a battle royal between Peaky Blinders type gangs and Lewes police