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Footage Of West Ham


erasuretim

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Great footage, thanks for posting. Really brings it home how London, once so rich in clubs and traditions is now lost to speedway. I live now only a few miles from where West Ham and Hackney were but have to travel to Hertfordshire or Essex for speedway, tragic. Must have been great to go to different tracks each night within London, oh for a Ashes to Ashes style trip back in time!

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Sadly it's one of the venues that I was unable to get to as I was a too young to travel across London on my own back in 1972. It looks as if it was a great venue though!

 

If I'm not mistaken the reporter was John Stapleton.

 

Yes it was John Stapleton.

 

Sadly I just missed out on Custom House for similar reasons :-(

 

Rob McCaffery.

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Yes it was John Stapleton.

 

Sadly I just missed out on Custom House for similar reasons :-(

 

Rob McCaffery.

 

 

No doubt about the interviewer/commentator being John Stapleton - his name is mentioned with the clip.! :rolleyes:

 

I first went to West Ham in April 1954 - on an assignment for the long-gone 'Speedway Gazette.' Doug Falby (pre-war business secretary to promoter Arthur 'Westy' Westwood) was then the Gazette's owner-editor.

Edited by speedyguy
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As everyone else has said how sad - but a a great bit of footage.

It particularly hurts me as I've spent virtually all my adult life living and working in East London and meet on a daily basis many people who went to Custom House but I sadly never did. Back in '72 I was just a 12 year-old living in Kent and went to my first meeting (at Canterbury) that year...: just weeks after West Ham closed for good..!

 

BTW, the only gripe I'd have with the coverage was there was no attempt to say who any of the people interviewed were! Who were the two riders from the '30s? :unsure: One was Arthur (is that Arthur Atkinson..?).

BTW, anyone else spot Snowy Beattie standing behind said two elderly gentlemen..?!!

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Who were the two riders from the '30s? :unsure: One was Arthur (is that Arthur Atkinson..?).

The two riders are Arthur Atkinson and Tiger Stevenson

 

did anyone go to west ham when it was a complete stadium. i never went there until 1970 and by this time the back straight and part of the first and all of the second bends had already been demolished. it must have been a great stadium when still intact.

Yes, I did. It was indeed a great stadium.

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did anyone go to west ham when it was a complete stadium. i never went there until 1970 and by this time the back straight and part of the first and all of the second bends had already been demolished. it must have been a great stadium when still intact.

 

 

As I mentioned in a previous Post :unsure: I first went to West Ham in April 1954. What a great place it was. Then over the years until the early 1960s, I was a regular at Custom House for both speedway and stock car racing. Happy days!

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Very poignant watching those clips. :cry: How could such a great venue have been lost to the sport? No doubt someone made a pretty penny from selling the stadium down the river! :mad:

 

 

I think you will find that the reason the stadium was sold was because it had become so old it was a more economical to demolish and sell the land than to refurbish a place where, over the post war years, people increasingly stayed away from the activities covered there. A West Ham page can be found on

http://londonspeedways.proboards.com/index.cgi

Edited by speedyguy
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