Chelmsford City racecourse, originally known as Great Leighs Racecourse, is a

thoroughbred horse racing Thoroughbred racing is a sport and industry involving the racing of Thoroughbred horses. It is governed by different national bodies. There are two forms of the sport – flat racing and jump racing, the latter known as National Hunt racing in t ...

venue located in

Great Leighs Great Leighs is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of Great and Little Leighs, in the Chelmsford district of Essex, England, halfway between Chelmsford itself and Braintree. In 1931 the parish had a population of 728. History ...

near

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Southend-on-Sea and Colchester. It is located north-east of London a ...

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. When it opened in April 2008, it was the first entirely new racecourse in the UK since

Taunton Taunton () is the county town of Somerset, England, with a 2011 population of 69,570. Its thousand-year history includes a 10th-century monastic foundation, Taunton Castle, which later became a priory. The Normans built a castle owned by the ...

opened in 1927. It went into administration in January 2009, and racing did not resume until January 2015. Chelmsford City (known as Great Leighs at the time) was developed and owned by entrepreneur John Holmes and his son, Jonathan. It aimed to exploit potentially the largest unserved market in British horseracing. Overall there is slightly more than one racecourse per million people in Great Britain, but there was no racecourse in Essex (population >1.6 million), in east London (formerly in part, part of Essex) or in the neighbouring county of

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For govern ...

(population >1 million). The new course is only from Newmarket, the largest racehorse training centre in Britain. The course is laid out as an left-handed

Polytrack The track surface of a horse racing track refers to the material of which the track is made. There are three types of track surfaces used in modern horse racing. These are: *Turf, the most common track surface in Europe *Dirt, the most common track ...

oval, with a home straight. The 10,000-capacity grandstand was used at the

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Opening

Great Leighs racecourse was originally scheduled to open in October 2006, but the opening was deferred several times. On 20 March 2008, the racecourse announced that the opening fixture would be postponed to 20 April 2008, with the original opening date, 4 April 2008, being used a test day. Eventually, on 20 April 2008, the racecourse staged its first race meeting before an invited audience, with the opening race being won by Temple of Thebes. The first meeting with full public admission took place on 28 May 2008. The venue attracted some praise for some of its racing facilities but considerable criticism for the incomplete state of its visitor facilities. Attendances failed to meet expectations.

Closure and suspension of racing

The course was placed into

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and its temporary racing licence revoked on 16 January 2009. In March 2009, the administrators announced that the two parties that had made bids for the course had failed to demonstrate that they had sufficient financial backing. The administrators stated that they would enter into negotiations with the main creditor, the

Royal Bank of Scotland The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (RBS; gd, Banca Rìoghail na h-Alba) is a major retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest (in England and Wales) and Ulster Bank ...

, to see whether it was willing to take ownership of the course, and contract out the management of its operations to an established racecourse operator. The administrators subsequently made a deal with a local businessman, Terry Chambers, to lease the course to him for 18 months, but the course was unable to obtain a racing licence and was, therefore, ineligible to bid for fixtures for 2010. In September 2009, the administrators announced that they had struck a deal for Chambers and Bill Gredley to buy the racecourse with the hope that racing could resume in 2011, but the deal fell through. In June 2010 the administrators announced that they had given up hope of selling the business as a going concern and had started discussions with the Royal Bank of Scotland to find an alternative use for the site. In March 2011 it was reported that

Andrew Tinkler William Andrew Tinkler (known as Andrew Tinkler) was the chief executive officer of Stobart Group Limited until 1 July 2017. He lives in Cumbria Cumbria ( ) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in North West England, bordering Scot ...

, chief executive of

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, was in discussions with Royal Bank of Scotland about reopening the track as a racecourse. The course was bought by MC Racetracks in November 2011, but in May 2012 the British Horseracing Authority (BHA) rejected a bid to host fixtures at Great Leighs in 2013 but said that the owners were "welcome to submit an application to be part of the 2014 fixture list". In January 2013 MC Racetracks announced that they would submit an application to the BHA to hold racing at the course in 2014 but in June 2013, the BHA announced that it had rejected the application for 2014 fixtures. Late in 2013, it was reported that a syndicate headed by

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's proprietor,

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, had bought the track and was, as 'Chelmsford City Racecourse', to seek BHA approval for 2015 fixtures. In April 2014, the BHA announced that Great Leighs could apply to host fixtures in 2015 but without a guarantee of an expansion of all-weather fixtures. The BHA announced, in July 2014, that the course would be allocated 12 fixtures for racing in 2015, a figure subsequently increased to 58 meetings when the 2015 fixture list was published. The BHA announced that the course would stage its reopening meeting on 11 January 2015.

Reopening

The course reopened for racing on 11 January 2015, with an invited crowd of 800 people present, with the full public reopening taking place on 22 January 2015. The first race was won by Tryster by a short head. On 27 December 2015, racing from Chelmsford City appeared on

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for the first time following waterlogging at

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and the abandonment of the

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. In January 2017 Chelmsford City announced plans to build a

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and develop a new turf course inside the existing all-weather track.

Notable races

References

External links