Well it’s been almost three months since I wrote my first piece for the Plumpton web site and since then I have been looking at other web sites to see what sort of things people write about in their blogs. The answer seems to be anything and everything.

The 2009/10 season got underway with the increasingly popular Ladies’ Day which seems to draw a crowd on a par with Easter Monday. Highlight of that meeting for me was the win of Shammy Buskins in the Jimmy Parsons Memorial Chase ridden by Christian Williams. Shammy Buskins had won the Southern Grand National Mixed Open Race over four and a quarter miles at the Vale of Aylesbury with Garth and South Berks point to point at Kingston Blount in April and had since won under rules at Stratford before tackling the Plumpton fences. Shammy is trained at Aston Rowant by Lawney Hill; whose husband Alan trains our point to pointer. Lawney enjoyed an incredible summer during which she not only trained a winner at Epsom but also at one point topped the ‘hot trainers’ list in the Racing Post.

After the annual charity day in support of the Moorcroft Racehorse Welfare Centre on 19 October and the inaugural Army and Afghan Appeal Day on 16 November it was disappointing that the meeting on the 2 December had to be abandoned due to waterlogging. Talking of waterlogging my Plumpton statistics show that for all seasons for which the information is available a total of 87 meetings have been called off due to waterlogging. However, following all the work done on improving the drainage only two meetings have been lost for this reason in the last six years, whilst the worst seasons for abandonment were 1974/75 and 1985/86 in which six meetings were lost each time due to the effects of snow, frost and waterlogging.

I recently acquired a number of Racing Review Magazines covering the period 1949 through to 1956. Racing Review was a monthly publication and included a whole range of articles on racing topics. Interestingly it always included advertisements for most of the racecourses managed at the time by Pratt & Co which in addition to Alexandra Park, Cheltenham, Folkestone, Fontwell Park and Lewes also included Plumpton. This support seems to have been rewarded with significant editorial and photographic coverage of the said meetings. The January 1950 edition includes a full double page photo of the field for the Bolney Handicap Hurdle on 14 November 1949 jumping the downhill flight of hurdles led by Dick the Gee who went on to win and gave Fred Winter his first win over hurdles. Harry Sprague, who specialised in riding over hurdles, rode 13 winners at Plumpton between 1948 and 1956 and is pictured in the November 1950 edition winning Plumpton’s Newick Four Years old Hurdle on Le Frisson trained at Epsom by Walter Nightingall. The same afternoon the John Gosden trained Shaef won the Steyning Handicap Hurdle ridden by Andrew Jarvis. The grey Shaef who won five races at Plumpton and went on to compete in long distance chases is featured in a couple of editions of Racing Review and was for several years remembered in the Shaef Hurdle Race run at Plumpton’s August Bank Holiday meeting.

The advert for Plumpton in the February 1952 edition describes the course as being “Delightfully situated in the heart of Sussex” (well you can’t argue with that) and goes on to say that the next meeting will be on 13 February. That meeting never took place as it was abandoned as a mark of respect following the death of King George VI. Admission prices are shown as 27 shillings (£1.35) for the Reserved Enclosure and Paddock, 10 shillings and sixpence (52½p) for the Public Stand, and four shillings (20p) for the centre of the course. What is startling is that those prices included Entertainment Tax a levy of 47% imposed by the government which meant only just half of the gate money was retained by the course. It makes today’s VAT look good value!