TOMORROW will be 200 years to the day since the Racecourse staged its first sporting event and, as the name would suggest, they were horses who were the centre of attention.

That first race meeting, which makes this also the oldest sporting venue in Wales, was staged on Tuesday 29th September 1807.

The first race was called the Town Purse, and was won by Belinda, owned by Lord Stanford who collected a prize of 20 Guineas (about £3,600 today). The course ran in an anti-clockwise direction around the area now occupied by NEWI and the Racecourse Ground. The races started and finished near the Turf, and the final straight is today occupied by the Mold Road Stand.

For the next 50 years the races were held annually until the main sponsor, Sir Watkin Williams Wynn withdrew his support, partly due to pressure from local churchmen who argued with some justification that the races had developed a reputation for attracting drunkenness and violence.

Sadly, all the records from the first races were lost in a fire which destroyed Wynnstay Hall in 1858, and it is only thanks to the efforts of Arthur Shone, who wrote a book on the history of the Wrexham Races in the early 1990's, that we know anything about them at all, including the details of the very first race.

From 1867 to 1872 the Racecourse was the venue for the autumn sports, which were held in a carnival atmosphere and were very much a family day out, with the main sporting events being donkey races and cycle races.

Those autumn sports proved to be very popular, attracting crowds of up to 12,000, and led to a short lived revival of the races from 1873 to 1876. Ironically, the revival eventually failed due to poor attendances.

The annual Wrexham Races were revived for one last time in 1890, this time in the form of pony racing, which initially proved to be very popular and only ended when a rail strike caused the cancellation of the 1911 meeting, and then poor weather affected the attendance at what proved to be the last ever Wrexham Races on 26th August 1912.

It was in October 1912 that another almost forgotten event was held at the Racecourse, a flying display by a well known pioneering aviator at the time, Gustav Hamel. By this time the football ground had become fully enclosed and the running track had been realigned so that the pitch was outside the racing circuit. The centre of the running track was used as the landing ground, while the spectators watched the display from the uncovered stands of the football ground.

Hamel returned to the Racecourse the following June, and this time decided to land on the playing pitch. Unfortunately, it had been raining, and after touching down near the town end goal, Hamel was unable to stop on the wet surface before colliding with the crowd barrier at the other end of the ground. No one was hurt and the aircraft only suffered minor damage, but it was enough to prevent any further flying, so the display was abandoned.

The Racecourse's association with flying did not end here however. The old racecourse was often used during the 1920's & 30's as a private airfield by locally based flying enthusiasts and Wrexham Borough Council wanted to create a municipal aerodrome on the site, and offered to pay for an aircraft hangar to be built.

The problem was that the Racecourse actually lay outside the borough until a boundary change in 1935, by which time there were so many houses nearby that the plans had to be abandoned. The old racecourse circuit finally disappeared under the new Technical College (NEWI) in the early 1950's.

All that remains of the Wrexham Races today is the Turf pub, five stewards badges held at the Denbighshire Records Office in Ruthin, and of course the name of our famous old ground.

As well as horse racing, the Racecourse was also used by Wrexham Cricket Club, and it was from members of the Cricket Club that Wrexham Football Club was formed in 1872. Cricket Club members met at the Turf Hotel on 28th September 1872, for 'the purpose of starting a football club for the ensuing season.' This was to give them activities for the winter months.

Not long after, changing rooms were added next to the Turf for use by both cricketers and footballers. The football pitch at this time lay from north to south, and so it remained until 1902, when it was changed to its present day situation of east to west.

With the growth of football in North Wales the Racecourse became the home of Welsh football, with international games taking place there, as well as Welsh Cup finals.

The Wales v New Zealand friendly in May this year was the 92nd full international match played on the Racecourse. The first of these games, played on 5th March 1877 when Scotland where the visitors, was the first international match to be played outside Glasgow or London. The venues in both of these cities were cricket grounds, namely Hamilton Crescent and The Oval respectively, therefore the Racecourse Ground is the world's oldest international football ground still currently in use.

To add to this unique record of being the oldest international football ground anywhere in the world, the Racecourse is also the oldest sporting venue in Wales, with the first race meeting taking place 41 years before Cardiff Arms Park hosted its first event, a cricket match in 1848.

Happy birthday to the Racecourse.

Glyn Davies
Wrexham FC Collectors and History Society