Fontwell Park can be proud of its rich racing century of memories
Fontwell Park is 100 years old this month – and is holding a major celebration. To mark the milestone, we asked racing author Jim Beavis to give us a potted history of the popular racecourse.
The first race meeting at Fontwell Park was a two-day fixture beginning on May, 21 1924. The meeting closest to that date this year, on the evening of Thursday, May 16, will be devoted to celebrating the 100th anniversary.
The track was laid out on land belonging to trainer Alfred Day, a member of a wellknown 19th century racing family. He had moved to this quiet Sussex backwater in 1887 when he bought a house on the other side of what is now the A27.
It had stables and gallops on the south side of the road. There were a few houses scattered nearby, and there was no such place as Fontwell.
Day created some wonderful landscaped gardens and you can still see evidence of his handiwork today, including topiary, stone ornaments and the domed summerhouse. He also planted the trees lining the road beside the course, Fontwell Avenue.
Day discovered a spring in his grounds that was used by Roman legions marching between settlements at Chichester and Pevensey; it was the only drinking water for miles around.
The Romans called the place “Fons” – as in font. Centuries later the Saxons added “well” to the name. Day found a 1630 map marking its position as “Fontwell”. He started calling it Fontwell – even though font and well mean the same thing. It caught on and by 1910 the name was on Ordnance Survey maps.
Day had a wide circle of acquaintances, including socialite and royal mistress Lily Langtry. He sometimes acted as an art dealer, while collecting military memorabilia such as one of Nelson’s swords, relics from the Civil War, and remnants of oak from Henry VIII’S warship Mary Rose.
One evening after the First
World War, he was walking round his garden with Sporting Life journalist Meyrick Good. Day intimated that he might give up training. He was over 60 and some of his best owners had died. It struck Good that Day’s training grounds could be turned into a racecourse.
Space was limited, so a figure-of-eight chase track was designed, a format often used in France. The main stand was topped by a thatched roof.
Thousands thronged the course for the first day’s racing. The first race was a three-mile chase with four runners won by Gem, ridden by champion jockey Dick Rees.
There were just four days’ racing a year to begin with, two in May and two in October. That gradually increased.
Fontwell was thriving by 1939, and soon after WWII broke out the Chief Constable of West Sussex wrote to the Home Office asking for advice about forthcoming meetings there, where he felt large crowds should not be allowed because it was only two miles from RAF Tangmere. But jump racing continued at Fontwell until April 1940.