Old Craven Park was a
rugby league
Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...
and
greyhound racing
Greyhound racing is an organized, competitive sport in which greyhounds are raced around a track. There are two forms of greyhound racing, track racing (normally around an oval track) and coursing; the latter is now banned in most countries. Tra ...
stadium in
Hull,
East Riding of Yorkshire
The East Riding of Yorkshire, or simply East Riding or East Yorkshire, is a ceremonial county and unitary authority area in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England. It borders North Yorkshire to the north and west, South Yorkshire to t ...
, England.
Rugby league
Hull Kingston Rovers
Hull Kingston Rovers are a professional rugby league club based in Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire, England, that competes in the Super League, the top tier of British rugby league. The club has won five league championships, and one Challeng ...
moved from Craven Street in East Hull to a new ground called Craven Park in 1922. The club had purchased a site behind the tram and bus depot on the eastern end of Holderness Road by Aberdeen Street at a cost of £18,281 and it hosted its first game on 2 September 1922.
The ground staged an
Ashes series
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. The term originated in a satirical obituary published in a British newspaper, ''The Sporting Times'', immediately after Australia's 1882 victory at The Oval, its first Te ...
test in
1929
This year marked the end of a period known in American history as the Roaring Twenties after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide Great Depression. In the Americas, an agreement was brokered to end the Cristero War, a Catholic ...
with
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
defeating
Great Britain
Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...
31–8 in front of 20,000 fans.
In the early 1970s Hull Kingston Rovers purchased a site at Winchester Avenue with the aim of building a new stadium there. These plans never came to fruition and the site was later sold to a private developer. The profit made from this land was used to buy back Craven Park with greyhound racing continuing as a subsidiary concern.
Greyhound racing
Opening
A company called Entertainments Hull Ltd brought greyhound racing to the stadium to rival the operation at the
Boulevard Stadium and the first meeting took place on 5 May 1928. The lease was soon secured by the Associated Greyhound Company who also had
control of
Towneley Stadium in Burnley and
Darnall Stadium in Sheffield but the company went bankrupt and the greyhound operation suffered difficult times with a depression on the horizon.
New owners
With the greyhound racing boom underway a new company called Hull (Craven Park) Stadium Ltd bought the stadium from Hull Kingston Rovers in 1938. The rugby team secured a 21-year lease in the £10,750 sale. The track raced under
National Greyhound Racing Club The National Greyhound Racing Club was an organisation that governed Greyhound racing in the United Kingdom.
History
The National Greyhound Racing Club (NGRC) was formed in 1928 and this body would be responsible for regulation, licensing and the r ...
(NGRC) rules and the circuit was described as a handy sized track with a circumference of 407 yards with good length straights and with starting boxed that are set back to take full advantage of the length of the straight. Banking was 1 in 12 and an 'Inside Sumner' hare was used. Distances of 292, 496 & 698 yards made up the races and the stadium kennels charged owners one guinea per week, an agreement that included veterinary attention.
Facilities included three covered enclosures; the large home straight enclosure offered two clubs, the Silver Ring Club and the Stadium Club. The Supporters Club was to be found within the back straight covered stand whilst the
totalisator
A tote board (or totalisator/totalizator) is a numeric or alphanumeric display used to convey information, typically at a race track (to display the odds or payoffs for each horse) or at a telethon (to display the total amount donated to the chari ...
and racing office was situated between the third and fourth bends. Distances changed to 500 and 700 yards by 1946.
History
Business exceeded the much larger Boulevard venue and Craven Park managed to pass the £1 million mark in 1946 in regards to tote turnover.
The stadium opened a restaurant and four buffet bars for the public with racing held on Thursday and Saturday nights during the 1950s and 1960s and in 1975 the stadium was bought back by Hull Kingston Rovers. As the 1970s progressed Mr V Holland was brought in as the new Racing Manager and Roy Thickett became replacing the retiring Arthur Rising. Popular events at the track included the Hair Belle Trophy, Art Wells Stakes, Charles Key Memorial Stakes and the Jack Lawlor Trophy. The track trainers were Jack King and Sylvia Cooke and they were joined by Ray Jones and John Tollafield. The last meeting was held during March 1989.
Track records
Closure
Following the
Bradford City stadium fire, capacity was restricted and costs of safety work spiraled. With the club in debt the ground was sold to developers and the final rugby league game was played there on 9 April 1989. John Kennedy the new General Manager of the greyhounds was tasked with securing the future of the greyhound operation which moved two miles away to
New Craven Park.
The ground was demolished and a
supermarket
A supermarket is a self-service Retail#Types of outlets, shop offering a wide variety of food, Drink, beverages and Household goods, household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earli ...
was built on the land originally called Leo's then
Co-op
A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned and democratically-control ...
, it is now occupied by
Morrisons
Wm Morrison Supermarkets, trading as Morrisons, is the fifth largest supermarket chain in the United Kingdom. As of 2021, the company had 497 supermarkets across England, Wales and Scotland, as well as one in Gibraltar. The company is headqua ...
.
Rugby League Test Matches
The list of international rugby league matches played at Craven Park is:
Old Craven Park at Rugby League Project
/ref>
Rugby League Tour Matches
Craven Park also saw the Hull Kingston Rovers, the county team Yorkshire
Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a Historic counties of England, historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other Eng ...
and the Great Britain Under-24 side play host to international touring teams from Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
(once playing as Australasia
Australasia is a region that comprises Australia, New Zealand and some neighbouring islands in the Pacific Ocean. The term is used in a number of different contexts, including geopolitically, physiogeographically, philologically, and ecologica ...
) and New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
from 1926 to 1986.
References
{{English greyhound tracks
Defunct rugby league venues in England
Sports venues in Kingston upon Hull
Hull Kingston Rovers
Sports venues completed in 1922
Defunct greyhound racing venues in the United Kingdom
Sports venues demolished in 1989