Potters legend Reg Fearman has been kind enough to
spare his time and
share his memories of Stoke Speedway with us.
Thanks also to Reg and John Skinner of
www.defunctspeedway.co.ukfor the images used.
INTRODUCTION
It is thanks to Phil Smith who has invited me to share some of my experiences and photographs with you.
I have always had a great affinity with The Potteries and District. Although I now live in the South of France I still feel for my former home and surroundings of the Potteries where I lived from 1952 to 1953 and from1956 to 1968.
In fact, my Grandmother Fearman was evacuated to Tunstall after being bombed out in London in 1942. She decided to stay there after the War and is buried in Tunstall church yard. I travelled with my father from London to visit Gran on several occassions in the years 1945-6-7. The Potteries were a very different place in those times with the pot banks belching out thick black smoke. Little did I know then that the Potteries and Stoke Speedway were to play a major role in my life just a few years later.
I came to race at Stoke Speedway on loan from West Ham. I was doing my Army National Service from June 1951 to June 1953 at Rhyl North Wales. It was in March 1952 that my loan agreement started. It suited me that Stoke raced on a Saturday and that I could have my leave by the day to do away matches.
Although I had not raced for a year I soon found my mark and formed a formidable relationship with Captain Ken Adams. Ken was a great help to me. I stayed with him at weekends in the same "digs" in Tunstall and he would prepare my machine for the next race meeting. In 1954, we were each other's best man at our respective weddings.
When I travelled from Camp to Stoke on a Saturday I would bring with me another couple of "squaddies" who lived in the district. It was while picking one of them up from Leek to go back to Camp that I met his sister-in-law, Joan, who became my wife in September 1954. She had never been to a speedway meeting and I took her to the first meeting of the season in 1953 at Swindon which was Stoke's first match. I had a very good night scoring 12 points and ran second in the second half scratch race final to Ian Williams. As we travelled back to Stoke I asked Joan what she thought of the racing. She said it was most thrilling and exciting but that she had not watched any of my races as she was frightened!!! After that of course she watched many and it became a way of life. Joan and I travelled far due to the world of Speedway, not only in the UK but also abroad. She promoted with me in my Speedway Promoting career from 1960 to 1986. Joan died in 1999 and I married her long standing friend , Eileen Arnison a widow, in 2004. It was then that we moved to the South of France.
When we opened Stoke Speedway on Good Friday 1960 - it had been closed for some seven years - we had no idea that we would be promoting speedway in other towns and cities for the next 26 years. The Good Friday crowd of 10,990 (the cash takings at admission prices of two shillings and sixpence -12p in today's money -and one shilling and threepence - 6p - were a total of £1,411 before deductions) were fans who had been starved of their speedway for so long. A crowd of 2,000, which is more the norm today, at today's admission prices of around £14 brings in some where around £28,000. But, of course, times and the value of money have changed over the past 40 years or so.
It was during the 1963 season that the Chairman of Northern Greyhound Racers (Hanley Ltd) Mr Reg Austerberry asked me to his office to tell me that the Directors and Shareholders of the Company had decided to sell Hanley Stadium (standing in some six acres of land) as they were all ageing. I was offered the first choice at £36,000, in today's money some £ millions. There was no chance that I could raise that figure then and so the local Ford Agent, Albert Chatfield (who drove an American Ford Galaxy), bought the Stadium and moved his business from Marsh street.
My time racing for the "Potters" and promoting Stoke Speedway was most enjoyable and in those days an awful lot of fun. I had many interval attractions - Stan Lindbergh On Fire Through Fire Into Fire from a 50ft tower diving into a tank of water just six feet deep, Marcel on the Swaying Pole and always a personality to open the season - perhaps Ken Cope (Jed Stone) from Coronation Street or Pat Phoenix (Elsie Tanner) also from the Street.
In 1962 we had the big joker "Igor Baranov". He came for after match trials in the scratch races. He was reputed to be Russian and when the Evening Sentinel sports reporter, Bill Deakin, phoned me for news I said he was either a student who had "jumped" or a seaman who had swum ashore from a fishing boat. When I met Igor in the cafe opposite Robson Street he spoke not a word. His partner interpreted speaking gibberish. It was his act to get rides at various speedway tracks. I must say we had many coloumn inches of publicity out of it. I met him many years later as a spectator at Wimbledon. He said remember me, Igor Baranov? It turned out that he was a Scot and was then in the world of wrestling.
In 1963 we made an effigy of a Cradley Heath rider, made a gallows by the starting gate and had Tyburn Gallows hang the effigy at the start of the meeting. The following Sunday we had the "act" spread over two pages in the Sunday People and there was a follow up the following week. At that time, there was a great anti capital punishment debate going on in Parliament. Tyburn, real name Raymond Humphries, once claimed to be the Assistant Hangman to the Crown. He died some years ago.
We had the real life 'Murder At The Speedway' in late 1963. A young girl from out of town was befriended by a local boy at the speedway on Saturday night. She was found in an adjacent building to the Stadium early on Sunday morning with head injuries from which she later died. From Scotland Yard came Chief Superintendant Bob Acott with his Sergeant, Kenneth Oxford, who later became the Chief Constable of Liverpool and oversaw the Toxeth riots. There were many witnesses and the boy was convicted.
In 1964 with the closure of the Hanley Stadium I looked at other local venues. Cobridge Stadium was one of them. It had staged Midget car Racing in the 1930s and was now in the ownership of the S.O.T. Education Department as a sports stadium. My application was refused and my inquiries at Trentham Gardens came to nothing. It was not until 1968 that a promoting company that I was involved with made a satisfactory arrangement with British Railways to lease the Crewe Cricket Ground for speedway racing. We opened in 1969 and although it was some distance for the Stoke fans to travel ,at least they had speedway back in their area. It was a black day for Crewe when Russel Bragg via a building company built the present Chesterton Loomer Road venue. There was not enough support to allow both tracks to survive and so it was Crewe which eventually closed for good.
I am pleased that Loomer Road has proved so succesful over the years and I know that some of my fans from my riding days in the period 1952-1953 are regular attenders.
I hope you enjoy my odd jottings from time to time and of course the photographs from my collection.
