Uneasy riders & grazing cows
Roger Guttridge recalls an unlikely event in Bryanston Park
Published in September ’17
When Blackmore Vale Motor Cycle Club chose Bryanston Park as the venue for their road races of 11 May 1947, they got rather more than they bargained for: confusion, controversy and ‘country life’ issues, including a milk lorry and a herd of cows that kept wandering across the course.
At the end of it, the head of Bryanston School, Thorold Coade, was under fire and had to explain himself in Motor Cycling, an illustrious magazine edited by Graham Walker, father of Murray.
Number 37 Roland Pike passes the estate buildings at Bryanston on his way to victory in the 250 cc race
I would guess that Blackmore Vale MCC were surprised in the first place when Mr Coade had granted them permission (as they saw it) to use a one-mile course centred on the Bryanston School buildings.
Less than a week before the high-profile event, the school withdrew their permission: ‘The school realised there were to be spectators and also it may not have helped that the event was on a Sunday,’ 84-year-old Brian Wright, a retired head of Bryanston village school, tells me. ‘The governors refused permission at the last moment and an alternative circuit had to be quickly arranged.’
When Bryanston School changed their minds, landowner Viscount Portman and Captain H G F Brown of Home Farm came to the rescue. These ‘two good sportsmen’, as Motor Cycling described them, offered an alternative course for which they were rewarded with an acknowledgement on the cover of the programme.
The 1½-mile circuit included some worthy features, such as an S-bend, left- and right-hand bends out of Bryanston village and a climb.
The downsides were that the road was narrower than the original course and over half a mile of it had a gravel surface: ‘It included some very loose going, more in keeping with a grass track or scramble,’ Brian recalls.
BVMCC compounded the problem by forgetting to tell the competitors about the change of course – this earned them their own rap on the knuckles from Motor Cycling: ‘Several who arrived for the Saturday evening practice found themselves over-geared – and not particularly happy about the possibility of dropping £300 worth of motorcycle on the loose gravel,’ said the magazine.
On the day itself, the 8am practice was ‘interrupted at intervals by the passage of a milk lorry’ and by the first appearance of the cows. A quarter of the riders opted not to compete because of the gravel.
A 350 cc heat gets underway in Bryanston Woods
By noon the meeting proper was under way with events for 250, 350, 500 and 1,000cc machines. Between the heats and final of the 250 cc event, there was an interval ‘while the cows made one of their periodic crossings of the course’.
The 500 cc event was also delayed as the cows made yet another crossing, which this time took half-an-hour.
Motor Cycling fanned the flames of debate when it began its report on the meeting by accusing the Bryanston School governors of an action ‘calculated to create unpleasant controversy’ – a claim that Mr Coade later described as incorrect and misleading. The magazine’s gossip columnist, Mercury, claimed Bryanston’s ‘wretched schoolboys’ had been forbidden to venture within 100 yards of the course and added: ‘There was even talk of the local hospital refusing to accept casualties – although I really cannot believe that such was the case.’
Mr Coade explained that when the school was first approached about the use of the Bryanston estate roads for an ‘open road’ race, he misunderstood the proposals. ‘I imagined, quite wrongly, as it turned out, that the School was being asked to allow motorcyclists to use the School Drive, which by-passes Blandford, in order to avoid the race taking place through the town,’ he wrote.
‘The first indication I had of the real nature of the event was less than a week before it was due to take place, when I found the road around the school building had been selected, without consultation with any school authority.… I was not prepared to take responsibility for any danger that might have been caused to boys in the school, nor for the fact, of which I had not been apprised, that many thousands of spectators were expected.’
Mr Coade said the organisers responded ‘very courteously’ when he asked them to move the races to an alternative course. He added: ‘I understand, from the exceedingly large number of spectators, that the event was a sporting and financial success. The fault for the misunderstanding was primarily due to my own ignorance of the intentions of the Club, and partly, I think, to their not having got into contact with me very much sooner about the exact nature of their intentions.’
Graham Walker commented: ‘The meaning of an “Open” Road Race is understood by all sporting motorcycles. No blame attaches to the Headmaster of Bryanston School for construing this title as an “Open Road” race.’
