19 replies to this topic

[BRG]

I live quite close to Wisley Airfield in Surrey, UK, which lies just south of the A3 road close to Junction 10 of the M25.  Wisley Gardens (Royal Botanical Society) is just to the north of the A3 at the same point.   The airfield was used in conjunction with the Vickers/BAe aircraft factory at Brooklands and was in use for flying until the early 1970s.  Since then it has lain dormant except for the occasional bus rally and cow-pie show.  It is now controversial as developers wish to build a 'new town' there, much to the outrage of existing local inhabitants although the new Labour government might well over-rule their objections.

 

However, with the M25 Junction 10 upgrade works that are currently making our lives rather difficult in this area, there has been some attention to the airfield which is partly being used as a works depot for the upgrade.  In a recent very interesting  YouTube video about the history of the airfield, it was mentioned that Wisley had been known as London Race Park and used for motor racing. This came as complete news to me -  despite being born and raised in the vicinity, I had never heard of any motor sport usage for the airfield.  A bit of Googling revealed just one Reddit post that said it was used for a F3 race in 1966 which may have been where the YouTube video got the story. 

 

But I wonder if this is true as this list of British 1966 F3 races makes no mention of a race there, nor can I see any other record. Is this just someone's fantasy race track design or is there any substance to it?  I note that the text claims that it was "..was massively used for testing of Le-Mans spec sports cars of that era."  

 

Can anyone cast any light on this or have I been led down a rabbit-hole?  And is this how fake news becomes "fact"?

 

[2F-001]

I can imagine the A3 itself being used to test the odd sports car in years gone by - but not "massively"...

[wheadon1985]

The BARC started it's life as the Cyclecar club on 7th December 1912 at the Wisley Hut hotel which was situated just opposite the Bolder Mere Lake on the bottom of Wisley Common so motor racing does have some history in the area. Also not that far from the Tyrrell factory in Ockham. 

[Sterzo]

It's conceivable they had banger racing ("stock cars" as they would have been called then) or similar, which wouldn't have made the motoring press. 1966 was my first full year in London, and it's unlikely (I put it no stronger) that an F3 race would have taken place within easy reach without me being aware. I have 1966 Autosports, but without an index. If there's a hint of a date anywhere then I could check the issues.

 

I would vote: Fake News.

[BRG]

The BARC started it's life as the Cyclecar club on 7th December 1912 at the Wisley Hut hotel which was situated just opposite the Bolder Mere Lake on the bottom of Wisley Common so motor racing does have some history in the area. Also not that far from the Tyrrell factory in Ockham. 

1912 long predates the airfield which was WW2 vintage.  The Hut survived until the 1970s when the A3 was widened but did the club still meet there in post WW2 years?

 

It's conceivable they had banger racing ("stock cars" as they would have been called then) or similar, which wouldn't have made the motoring press. 

I was a teenager then, but I used to go to Wimbledon Stadium with y big brother for stock car racing back then.  If there had been stock cars at Wisley, I think I would have known about it.

 

Looking faker by the moment....

[ChiliFan]

Is this just someone's fantasy race track design or is there any substance to it?

 

That's exactly what it is, the subreddit it was posted in is for people to share fictional track designs. 

[davidsalt]

The two authoritative sources to confirm, or otherwise, and Formula 3 race at Wisley Airfield are :-

 

1) The Formula One Register’s  Record Book covering Formula 3 in 1966

2) Julian Hunt’s wonderful Motorsport Explorer covering all motorsport venues, past and present, in the British Isles.

 

There is no F3 race at Wisley in 1966 listed  by the F1R.

Julian’s book makes no mention of an event at Wisley Airfield.

 

Simple….

 

BW!!

[BRG]

It seems that, although the Race Park thing was a chimaera that has unfortunately been taken as true in the YouTube video and may now become a fake fact, there was some motorsport use of the Wisley Airfield as stages on the Happy Eater Rally .  RS2000 has started a thread on this.  

 

Any other thoughts about Wisley are welcome here.

[BRG]

Successive governments have been remarkably reluctant to give up any of the lands sequestrated in WW2 even where they are no longer in use.  Wisley was operational until 1974 when BAe stopped using it, and the government took 5 years to dispose of the place in 1981 when it returned to private ownership by Lord Lytton the local bigwig.  With his support it was planned to use the airfield for business aviation but after much opposition this was finally rejected by the Secretary of State.  A precursor to the current planning dispute over 'Wisley New Town' which may however be permitted if the new government's comments about house building are ever brought to reality.  I am not aware of any mystery plans for the place. 

[bigears]

Peter Swinger’s book: Motor Racing Circuits in England Then & Now doesn’t mention Wisley, only Whitchurch.

[Collombin]

Must be quite a short book then.

[RS2000]

Any other thoughts about Wisley are welcome here.

 

Well, it did come up earlier this century when a chat about potential new sprint venues on a club forum actually resulted in a secret recce by the competitions secretary. (He was a BT engineer and had a BT van which took him all over the south east and into all manner of places where no one took any notice of it because it was so common a sight to see anywhere).

I think a footpath right of way had already been posted across it by then so it was a complete non starter.

Edited by RS2000, 28 July 2024 - 22:31.

[Alan Baker]

Successive governments have been remarkably reluctant to give up any of the lands sequestrated in WW2 even where they are no longer in use.  Wisley was operational until 1974 when BAe stopped using it, and the government took 5 years to dispose of the place in 1981 when it returned to private ownership by Lord Lytton the local bigwig.  With his support it was planned to use the airfield for business aviation but after much opposition this was finally rejected by the Secretary of State.  A precursor to the current planning dispute over 'Wisley New Town' which may however be permitted if the new government's comments about house building are ever brought to reality.  I am not aware of any mystery plans for the place. 

I am not sure that the government had any involvement in Wisley, it was not a WW2 airfield. The story was the Vickers Chief Test pilot, Mutt Summers, discovered it when he had to make an emergency landing and decided it would be a good site for a test airfield, so the land was bought by Vickers. It remained a grass field until 1953 (the prototype Valiant bomber made its maiden flight from the grass), when Vickers laid a single 6.600 foot long concrete runway. This was connected to the apron area by a couiple of taxiways but there was no perimeter track like the WW2 airfields at Silverstone and Snetterton. It is difficult to see how any racing circuit could have been created there and in any case it was very busy with test flying of VC10s and One-Elevens in the mid sixties.

[BRG]

The land forming the airfield was requisitioned by the Ministry of Supply during WW2 and was leased to Vickers who laid the hard surface.  It was never a RAF base.  When the lease was terminated, the MoD (who had taken it over when the MoS was closed) arranged for the disposal.  The terms of the requisitioning were said to be that it would be returned in due course to the original owners for agricultural purposes, which is the basis of the current objection to building houses there.

Edited by BRG, 29 July 2024 - 09:17.

[Vitesse2]

The land forming the airfield was requisitioned by the Ministry of Supply during WW2 and was leased to Vickers who laid the hard surface.  It was never a RAF base.  When the lease was terminated, the MoD (who had taken it over when the MoS was closed) arranged for the disposal.  The terms of the requisitioning were said to be that it would be returned in due course to the original owners for agricultural purposes, which is the basis of the current objection to building houses there.

And that of course is a lot of the reason why it was so difficult to gain permission to race on disused airfields in the immediate aftermath of the war. The land had often been requisitioned from several landowners, all of whom had to give their consent. A proposed circuit on RAF Balado Bridge in Scotland was scuppered when just one out of seven refused. It's my belief that the 1945 motorcycle race meeting at RAF Long Kesh, the Easter 1946 sprint at RAF Elstree and the first meeting at RAF Gransden Lodge only happened because the local commanders didn't bother asking if they could do it. Long Kesh was also supposed to hold a car race meeting in 1946 but that never happened, for reasons never apparently revealed, and Peter Hull's book 'The History of the Vintage Sports Car Club' contains an extraordinary and revealing account of how several VSCC members stepped in to help the Cambridge University AC in June 1947 when the Air Ministry suddenly withdrew permission for the second meeting at RAF Gransden Lodge just twelve days before it was due to take place. Not the least of their tasks was collecting the signatures of the six landowners from whom the site had been requisitioned – whose addresses the equally unhelpful Ministry of Works had refused to supply!

[BRG]

We are so lucky that successive UK governments and their Civil Service have always been so supportive of motorsport. 

 

 

(PS this is sarcasm - the UK's rise to be a major motorsport power was entirely managed despite the government.)

[Vitesse2]

We are so lucky that successive UK governments and their Civil Service have always been so supportive of motorsport. 

 

 

(PS this is sarcasm - the UK's rise to be a major motorsport power was entirely managed despite the government.)

I've researched this quite deeply and, to be fair, during much of 1946, the government and much of the Civil Service do actually appear to have been quite helpful in attempting to identify possible sites for motor sport on redundant airfields, although given that there was still fuel rationing in force, one big problem was that the sites offered were rural and not easily accessible by public transport. That would even have applied to Donington Park, had it been released, of course; ironically, one site offered was RAF Castle Donington, which was literally 'next door'!

 

There are certainly positive comments about governmental and ministerial co-operation in the specialist press. The attitude seems to have changed again that autumn - something perhaps not unconnected to Churchill's prescient 'Iron Curtain speech' in March 1946. But what they of course were not prepared to do was relax the law on racing on public roads - although I've seen mention of roads being closed during the war for motorcycle races as part of military training. The 1944 filming of 'The Rake's Progress' also involved racing cars running variously on closed and still open public roads ... with government approval!

[Rupertlt1]

See also: https://forums.autos...d/#entry4707120

 

RGDS RLT

[BRG]

I've researched this quite deeply and, to be fair, during much of 1946, the government and much of the Civil Service do actually appear to have been quite helpful 

 

I was thinking of rather later than that. 

 

But also to be fair, the military have been pretty helpful over the years allowing the use of places like Eppynt, Salisbury Plain, Otterburn, the Camberley army lands and a myriad of other amps and airfields.  Although access tended to depend on the attitude of the local commander - we tried to get Longcross (Chobham) for years until a change in commander suddenly opened it up.

[RS2000]

I think Wisley was used by the winner of the 1969 New York to London Air Race - landing in a RN Phantom and transferring to the finish in town by helicopter or motorbike or both. Haven't time to check further but I seem to recall it all ended in mild scandal because the RAF entry that involved a Harrier landing in a London coal yard was beaten by the RN entry that was refuelled in the air by a RAF Victor tanker.