Memories of Alexandra Park Racecourse

 

Alexandra Park racecourse was a unique track in North London.

It closed in 1970, but I never went despite the fact that my father's print works was just down the hill at 38-44 Station Road, Wood Green.


The firm traded under the name of H. Miller and Sons. My father was the second of two sons of his father Herbert and his mother Margaret. I never met Herbert as he died in the 1920s, but I can remember my grandmother well. She used to sit me on the ledgers so that I could watch the trains as they ran up to Palace Gates station, which like the racecourse is long since closed.

I suspect that their office with its Imperial typewriters was perhaps the third and fourth windows from the corner of the building. The upstairs corner offices were occupied by a company called, Light and Power Accessories. You can guess as well as I can about what they did.

Underneath on the corner was a greasy spoon. Later from about the age of eight, when I used to work at the weekends with my father, I can remember going to collect the ham rolls for lunch. As I'm a coeliac, I wouldn't do that now!

I mentioned about Palace Gates station and the trains that ran there from Seven Sisters. If you look the other way from my father's works you'll see that the road dips.


This dip was built to allow double deck buses to pass under the railway. A few years later Beeching abolished the railway.

Joined up thinking? No way.


Looking the other way, you can just about see Wood Green Underground Station in the distance. On the opposite site of the road is the pub called The Jolly Farmers, where my father used to take me for lunch as I got older. You have to remember that many landlords used to let kids in (illegally) in the 1950s at lunchtimes. This stopped as the authorities got more strict. It's funny how we've had to legislate to get back to the status quo.

Before the Second World War, my father had a strong connection to the racecourse. He claimed to have been involved (and subsequently warned off) for running a horse, which was supposedly owned by an Indian Maharajah. They used to paint a blaze on this horse with Meltonian, so that everybody thought it was something else. (With proper passports and electronic chips, this shouldn't happen any more.)

After the war his connections were more mundane.

He would have the odd bet and the tricksters used to setup the Crown and Anchor outside the print works to prey on the crowds walking from the Tube to the racecourse. If the police arrived, the tricksters would just duck inside and put some money in my father's poor box. (I should say, that I had a maths teacher at Minchenden Grammar School called, George Bullen, who advised strongly against playing the game.)

I've only seen the game being played once since and that was on Derby Day, when Vague Shot ran in the Diomed about twenty years ago.

So what of the racecourse today.


The course is still there and you can still make out its distinctive frying pan shape.

But it couldn't be used for racing again, as all of the slope up to the Palace, which performed the duty of a grandstand, is now covered in trees.

At least though, this historic London track is shown on the map of the park.