Colourful history of Hexham Racecourse

The sounds of hooves have echoed off its white walls into the rolling green hills of Hexhamshire beyond since the first race meeting there in 1890.

But as the great-grandson of the founder and former owner – until he sold it to Hexham and Northern Marts last year – Charles Enderby explains in the latest edition of the Hexham Historian, horse racing had been taking place in the town for a good 200 years before that.

A title deed dated August 9, 1670, describes a track known as the ‘green way’ that still runs up the side of the Dipton Mill Inn to Shield Green at the top, ultimately linking up with the old drove road that ends in Yarridge, where the racecourse is now.

So it appears there was once an ancient racecourse located next door to the one we have today.

Little is known of the race meets there, but what is known is that racing was also taking place on Tyne Green.

One historical document records that a purse of 20 pounds was available to be won by horses, mares and geldings running there on ‘ye 3rd May 1738’.

Charles says in Hexham Historian, an annual publication produced by Hexham Local History Society, that the Tyne Green races were once held to ransom following yet another clash in the long-running rivalry between Hexham’s two nationally- renowned 18th century cooks –Ann Cook and Hannah Glasse.

“A major figure known to be involved in running the races on Tyne Green was John Cook,” he writes, “the licensee of the Black Bull, whose wife Ann, in the aftermath of the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion, famously fell out with the magistrate, Sir Lancelot Allgood, and his sister-in-law Hannah Glasse.”

By the time Ann Cook herself wrote about the matter, she said there had been no horse racing on Tyne Green for four years and that Lancelot Allgood had no intention of sanctioning it as long as the Cooks remained in town.

Fast forward 50 years and there are records of a three-day meet on Tyne Green in 1793, when the main race of each day boasted the princely sum of £50 in prize money.

There was also the additional attraction of cockfighting at what was named the Phoenix Pit between specimens ‘owned by the gentlemen of Northumberland and those owned by the gentlemen of Cumberland’.

At some point in the early 1800s, the Tyne Green meetings moved permanently up to the old, original site at Yarridge. However, eight decades later they shut down again, ostensibly put out of business by rival meets being organised at Wark.

Luckily, a saviour was at hand in the form of Charles’s great-grandfather, Charles William Chipchase Henderson, whose father, John, had once been MP for Durham City.

“The principal family company was Durham Carpets,” said 21st century Charles, “but the family sold their interest in the 1880s and moved to The Riding, a house a mile north of Hexham Bridge.

“Charles was a successful businessman, becoming chairman of Consett Iron Company and managing director of Bedlington Colliery.”

Not long after his arrival, the local hunting gentry decided that steeplechases should be revived in the area and Mr Henderson was invited to be honorary secretary.

It was a role he embraced with great gusto, as the first reinstituted meeting on Wednesday, April 23, 1890, demonstrated – there were six very well-supported races that day.

A race card from the second season lists the names of the stewards, most of them from our oldest Northumberland families – Joicey, Straker, Beaumont and Robson among them.

You can read on for another 127 years of the racecourse’s history and sample the 1802 folk song entitled Hexham Races before turning your attention to the rest of the diverse offerings in Hexham Historian.

There’s an article on the history of metal mining in the 18th and 19th centuries, mainly in the North Pennines, by Tim Barmby. It was the era of the Industrial Revolution, of course, and the hills were alive with the sound of shovels and pickaxes.

Susanne Ellingham investigates the history of Hexham’s allotments in this the year that the town’s oldest existing collection – at Quatre Bras in the West End – turned 100. Food shortage during the First World War was the impetus for the sudden and huge growth in the establishment of allotments, she writes in an article entitled Digging for Victory.

Clive Tolley revisits the turbulent times of the early 600s, during which King Oswald famously established Christianity in Northumberland after receiving a divine vision at Heavenfield, on Hadrian’s Wall, and defeating Welsh king Cadwallon in battle soon afterwards.

And with something of a grand flourish, Martin Green and Greg Finch reveal that the Altogether Archaeology group that grew out of a North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty Partnership project has pulled off something of a coup.

It had long been the question why there was no road between the Roman stronghold of Whitley Castle (which has now reverted to its original name of Epiacum) and the then major trading centre of Corbridge. Well, it appears there bleedin’ well was one!

Hexham Historian, which is edited by book dealer Mark Benjamin, is free to members of Hexham Local History Society or available for £6 from local booksellers.