Norwich's last stand

[Canadian Star 6]

About 2 years ago i took Ian Turner to meet with David Crane at his house in Norwich, it was fascinating to here these two former riders reminisce over many years of speedway at both Norwich and Kings Lynn. David talked at great length about the meeting at Horsford including how much he figured Cyril Crane, his uncle, probably invested in putting on just 1 meeting during the early seventies.

Is there anyone else out there who went or rode that day, what are your memories of it.

[norbold 7,116]

I didn't know they'd actually held a meeting at Horsford. I know they had some trials there in the 60s organised by Maurice Littlechild and Jack Thompson. I would also like to hear about any meetings there.

 

There was a meeting in December 1976 at Hevingham organised by Cyril Crane. Cyril and Violet Child built a banked 350 yard track capable of holding 15,000 spectators and organised a full-scale meeting to convince the planning authority to grant planning permission for the following year.

 

It was a full-scale 20 heat individual meeting mainly for juniors. The winner was the 14 year old Andy Buck. David Crane also took part.

 

The meeting was held without the sanction of the Control Board and some, John Berry of Ipswich in particular, thought the 'strongest possible action' should be taken against the organisers as his view was that an unlicensed meeting would give the sport a bad image and adversely affect others when applying for planning permission. In the end it didn't matter as planning permission was not granted anyway.

 

I was talking to Cyril Crane a couple of years ago about his attempts to get speedway back in Norwich. He told me that since 1964 he had put in 28 planning applications and all had been turned down.

[Canadian Star 6]

Norbold i actually mean Hevingham- my apologies, i have visited the site, i am sure it would have been ok. As i said before it was the probably the most expensive meeting ever staged. Many people worked on the project and a lot of money was invested, sadly 1 or 2 local people made a lot of fuss and got the place shutdown before it had got of the ground although there were other factors.

A lot of influencial people on the local council, with other interests, didn't wish to see speedway return to the Norwich area, and they made sure it didn't.

Maybe there are some lessons to be learnt even today from what happened here.

[iris123 20,993]

I thought there was some crazy permission from the council to only ride on Saturdays ,but the Control Board would only give them permission to race on Sundays or the other way round