Volume Three, published in October 2024, covers the contrasting meetings in the Midland counties, from the many around Birmingham, one of which caused a great riot, to some of the first steeplechases in rural Leicestershire, Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire, together with the sporting counties on the Welsh border. As with the first two books, it is arranged by county and profusely illustrated, featuring more than 840 historic location maps and images of the old meetings, as well as modern aerial photos of the landscape as it appears today. It’s another big book, in its scope and in its physical dimensions, and readers will be sure to find many fascinating anecdotes and nuggets of information in its meticulously researched pages.
952 pages. Size: Demy Quarto, 280 x 215 mm. Hardback with dustwrapper
John Cobb of the Racing Post reviews the latest volume…
A monumental epitaph to Britain’s lost racecourses
“IT TAKES a man as notably patient with his horses as Sir Mark Prescott – who has contributed the foreword – to fully understand the devotion that William Morgan has poured into researching these magnificent histories of Britain’s bygone racecourses.
This is volume three of Strongholds of Satan, covering the Midlands, and the fourth and final volume on the North and Scotland is on its way.
Forty years in the making, these are monumental works and much more than just a painstaking gathering of information as every page is full of life, vividly capturing aspects of racing that have long disappeared.
There is the tale of Aston Park, close to where Aston Villa FC’s ground now stands, which lasted for one meeting only in 1855 and ended when the majority of the 18,000 crowd “armed with the posts from the course” fought a pitched battle that continued into the town.
There are the many historic photos, including one from 1897 of the fashionable course at Northampton where they raced in the heart of the town until the track, which is now a park, was closed in 1904 for safety reasons.
Aerial photos, taken from a drone, reveal the locations of where courses once stood, including at Kington, Herefordshire, 1,000ft up on Offa’s Dyke Path, with steep gradients on all sides, last raced on 150 years ago but still there.
If you haven’t started collecting these volumes then get cracking…”
Printing is limited to 300 copies. To secure one of these fine books order your copy in the shop now!
