Earliest meeting: September 1754
Final meeting: Tuesday 15th August 1876
Walsall is a large industrial town in the West Midlands located 8 miles from Birmingham and 6 miles from Wolverhampton. It first staged races as early as 1754 on the Long Meadow. The land was owned by Lord Bradford who was obliged to allow the freeholders of the parish to feed and graze cattle from Lammas Day to Candlemas. The mile long oval racecourse was sufficiently close to the town centre to be accessible and had a stiff hill for the first furlong and a half, but then flattened to a straight run-in of 4 furlongs. While the exact date of the 1754 meeting is not known, 3 days of festivities did take place from Wednesday 24th to Friday 26th September 1755 with a Match run on the Friday when each horse carried 18 stone. A comment at the time was that ‘races took place as normal’, implying they had been staged in 1754. In 1807 Lord Grey enjoyed a very good meeting when his bay filly Belinda won both the Corporation Purse and the Town Subscription Purse. At the 2 day meeting on Wednesday 29th and Thursday 30th September 1824 the Corporation Plate saw Niobe defeat Little Driver and Tripoli, while the next day the wonderfully named Ynysymaengwyn was beaten into second place in the Town Plate by Libertine. Races continued to be well supported for a further 52 years until a final 2 day meeting on Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th August 1876. The concluding Town Welter Handicap Plate was won by Mr Hopwood’s Bloxwich. However, a meeting not under rules was staged on Monday 3rd August 1942.
Thursday 19th September 1833
Gold Cup Stakes over 3 miles and the distance
1. Repentance, chestnut filly owned by Sir E D Scott
2. Manchester, bay horse owned by Mr S Wightwick
3. Wolverhampton, brown horse owned by Mr J Beardsworth
I am grateful to John Griffiths for allowing me to include these 2 scans of an extremely rare Walsall Racecard from his very select collection.
(I am grateful to John Griffiths for granting permission for the front cover and map to be displayed on this website)
I am grateful to Ordnance Survey (© Crown Copyright) for permission to use the map shown below.
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Much of the information about this course has been found using internet research and is in the public domain. However, useful research sources have been:-
London Illustrated News
Racing Illustrated 1895-1899
The Sporting & Dramatic Illustrated
Northern Turf History Volumes 1-4 by J.Fairfax-Blakeborough
The Sporting Magazine
A Long Time Gone by Chris Pitt first published in 1996 ISBN 0 900599 89 8
Racing Calendars which were first published in 1727
