HURST PARK.

​Virtually everything that can be said of Hurst Park, unfortunately will be said about Kempton Park unless the Jockey Club have a sudden rush of commonsense.
Hurst Park was constructed on the site of ‘appy Hampton’ racecourse, a one meeting a year festival held on unclosed land in the early months of summer. As things were in the middle 1880’s the race meeting was a holiday for pickpockets and other local near-do-wells. Being unclosed meant the organisers could not charge its customers an entrance fee and being unable to raise a profit from the venture the proprietors could not afford to improve facilities or maintain the turf. Taking a dim view of such amateurish management the Jockey Club stopped issuing Hampton with fixtures causing it to close. I doubt if it were ever missed.
Someone with a sharp eye for potential must have recognised that the Hurst was very similar to the new and successful racecourse at Kempton and the Hurst Park Club Syndicate was born. Acquiring planning permission was quite straight-forward as the local inhabitants approved of the construction of the new racecourse as they viewed it as a far better alternative to the ‘jerry-builders’ getting their hands on ‘the Hurst’. As it is today with local residents preferring to save Kempton rather than have a new village foisted upon them.
The success of Sandown and Kempton had made the new ‘park racecourses’ in vogue and were the inspiration for Hurst Park, except the H.P.C.S. did not have enough land to really do the project justice. The first meeting, a jumping fixture, was on the 19th March – people could really get their skates on in those days – and did not draw a profit.
Because the course had no straight the Jockey Club would not license flat racing, so in the beginning during the fallow period of the jumps season pony racing was to be the attraction. But the course would not pay for itself, so additional land was purchased and a straight course of 7-furlongs added. Now racegoers came down from London on special trains and the course became popular and it attained a reputation as a ‘friendly racecourse’.
In 1913 Hurst Park became headline news when two suffragettes, Clare Giveen and the notorious Kitty Marion, set alight to the grandstand, leaving behind a banner with ‘Give Women the Franchise’ as their calling card.
Between the wars Hurst Park thrived and had at one point the newest photo-finish camera and up-to-date totalisators. It was well attended and being next to the river and in a parkland setting it was so picturesque it could have been parachuted in from ‘Three Men In A Boat’. Even in the 1960’s it remained both popular and profitable. But the racecourse proprietors had shareholders to keep happy and when the ‘jerry-builders’ came with their open cheque-books the sporting side of the business was given second consideration to the dividend of wads of cash and against the wishes of the locals sold the land for development, with the last race taking place on October 10th 1962.
At the subsequent auction Ascot bought a good deal of the turf for its new National Hunt course and Mansfield Town football club purchased the main grandstand. Altogether the bits and bobs of racing history sold for £10,000.
I have no recollection of Hurst Park as a live and relevant racecourse, except that the Triumph Hurdle began its existence there and that a young Lester Piggott won the race in 1954 on Prince Charlemagne. A few days earlier he had won his only race at the Cheltenham Festival on Mull Sack in a selling hurdle. How life has changed.
It is too easy to dismiss Hurst Park as a racecourse of no significance. But its similarity with Kempton does not end simply with being situated by the side of the Thames. The Victoria Cup began at Hurst Park and was won by such distinguished horses as Royal Minstrel, Honeyway and My Babu. The Henry 8th Stakes was also inaugurated at Hurst Park, as was The White Rose Stakes, the Winston Churchill Stakes, a race the great man won twice with Colonist in 1951 and High Hat in 1961. Sir Gordon Richards equalled Fred Archer’s long standing record of 246 winners in 1933. Even the National Hunt Chase was run at Hurst Park in 1891, 1896 and 1901.
At the first ever meeting the most valuable race of the day was won by Gamecock who had won the Grand National two years previously. Indeed the 1901 Derby winner Volodyovski won at the track, as did other such top class flat horses Tulyar, Supreme Court and Hornbeam. While the list of great jumpers who graced Hurst Park’s turf is seemingly endless. Golden Miller ran there on three occasions, winning on his first visit and then, beggaring belief, finishing only 3rd in a selling chase. Crudwell, Lochroe, Halloween, Team Spirit, Galloway Braes, E.S.B. and Devon Loch raced there and The Queen Mother’s ill-fated first horse Monaveen is actually buried close to where the old stable block used to be.
Hurst Park was not a backwater. It was not a Beaufort Hunt or a Keele Park. It was a proper racecourse that provided well-maintained turf and was considered a good and fair racecourse by both jockeys and trainers. Indeed everything that Kempton is now considered to be.
As I began; everything that can be said in memory of Hurst Park might one day be said in memory of Kempton.