The Thames from Hampton Court to Sunbury Lock

hurst park

molesey hurst

Hurst Park – formerly Molesey or Moulsey Hurst – was one of the earliest sites in the country for cricket. The Daily Courant reported a match in 1723 here between the Gentlemen of London and the Gentlemen of Surrey. There is a painting of a match at Molesey Hurst in the 1790s hanging in the Long Room at Lords.

 

It was also the location for one of the first games of golf played in England, in 1758 when the Revd Alexander Carlyle, John Hume and Parson Black visited David Garrick and played golf at Molesey Hurst. Afterwards Carlyle performed the world's first recorded golf trick shot, by pitching a ball through an arch in Garrick's garden into the River Thames.

 

The prize fights at Molesey Hurst sound quite fun too – in 1820 a boxer named Martin “pounded David Hudson’s face out of all semblance to humanity”. In 1816 a fight lasted 68 rounds, leading to the death of one contestant – the survivor was found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to two months imprisonment.

 

Prize fighting was finally banned here in 1824.

 

Just opposite the downstream end of Garrick’s Ait, where the road meets the river there was the Molesey Bathing Station, opened in 1925 – an official site for river bathing, complete with changing rooms. There was no admission fee but there was an attendant and opening times, plus rules against “inapproriate behaviour” and foul language. The season started on May 1st, and it was open Monday to Saturday 7am-9am and 4pm to dusk or 9pm; Sunday times were 7am-9am and 3pm-7pm. The changing rooms mysteriously burned down in 1966, around the time developers were building new houses on the site of the racecourse.

 

 

hurst park racecourse

Hampton Races took place on Molesey Hurst until 1887. This wasn’t a permanent racecourse – more like a fair twice a year in June and September, with sideshows, amusements and prize-fighting as well as horse racing.

 

It was called the Cockney Derby because it was a commoner’s event, unlike the more fashionable Epsom Derby. These races ended in 1887, when the Jockey Club refused to renew its licence because the course wasn’t properly maintained.

 

A permanent race course was opened at Hurst Park opened on 19 March 1890.

 

The course was shaped like a tennis raquet, with an eliptical track that stretched between the upstream end of Platt’s Eyot and the upstream end of Garrick’s Ait, and a long straight that began just east of Graburn Way.

 

In June 1913 the Royal Box and Grandstand were burned down by suffragettes as part of their campaign for voting rights for women—not sure of the logical connection between burning a grandstand and fighting for constitutional change, but that’s ladies for you.

 

One of the culprits was Kitty Marion (1871-1944), born Katherina Maria Schafer in Germany. As well as burning down the grandstand, Kitty threw stones through a post office window in Newcastle; participated in house burnings in Liverpool and Manchester; and broke windows and set off fire alarms on several other occasions. Over a span of five years, she was arrested seven times. During one prison stay she set her cell on fire by burning a Bible. Joining other suffragettes in prison hunger strikes, Kitty was forcibly fed—she claimed—232 times. Kitty was deported to the USA in 1914, where she continued her activism, this time advocating birth control—she was called “the face of birth control”, which is a rather worrying image—and was arrested a further nine times.

 

Racing continued at Hurst Park until 10 October 1962, when the site was sold for housing.

 

The grandstand was bought for £10,000 by Mansfield Town FC—it was demolished in 2000. Another grandstand had previously been sold to Epsom & Ewell FC in the 1920s or 1930s, but was demolished in 1993. The turnstiles are now at the Beveree Stadium in Hampton

 

In Graburn Way, the road leading from Hurst Road to Molesey Boat Club, you can see the tall red brick gateposts and large iron gates originally used to close off the road so races could start along the straight.

These gates in Grab