Following my recent request for memories of Chasewater Stadium, I had a great contribution from long time friend of the blog Fred Butler, who has a rather interesting contribution.
I’m after any ephemera or memorabilia anyone can supply, as there’s still much debate around the sporting venue and I’m absolutely fascinated in it as a social phenomena and business venture.
I thank Fred for this fascinating contribution, and welcome anything anyone would like to add. Please do comment here or mail me: BrownhillsBob at Googlemail dot com. Thanks.
Fred Butler wrote:
Hi Bob,
Saw your piece yesterday on the raceway at Chasewater, I have enclosed some pics of on of the hundreds of programmes I have got from over there, I used to go there every week.
In your piece it states that it was owned by Oscar Johnson, I don’t think that is quite correct, Oscar was a man who raced his horses there, but I believe the owner was a ‘mystery’ man named Mr Menagerdid who came from Wales, which was one of the major centres in Britain for the sport of harness racing.
I believe that the theory behind building the track here was its centralised location, other tracks were at the time in Wales, Scotland and Manchester, but a lot of the patrons came from the London area and the West Midlands, and so it was envisaged as a ‘centre of excellence’ for the sport.
Some good horses ran there, the great TED TROT owned by the Watton family from the black country was a champion, and he finished his career running in Canada. I have somewhere some VHS of race meetings at the track, if anyone can convert them, they may be of interest to show exactly what went on.
Cheers,
Fred.
Chasewater Stadium never really took off. Image from ‘Memories of Brownhills Past’ by Clarice Mayo and Geoff Harrington.