Thursday, July 30, 2020

Northampton's greyhound stadium lies beneath its new university campus


On Wednesday I posted a still of Northampton's greyhound stadium from a 1963 film about the town and noted that it closed the following year.

You can see the stadium in this 1947 aerial photograph of the town from the south.

It is the oval towards the bottom left of the photo and the curving line it stands next to is the railway into Northampton St John's station. It crosses the River Nene just to the north of the stadium.

Right in that bottom left-hand corner you can see an industrial area served by the railway that ran from Blisworth to Peterborough. Northampton Bridge Street station is just off the left-hand side of the photo.

If you follow the curving railway from the greyhound stadium to the bottom of the photo you will come to a large building.

This is the former Midland Railway engine shed that now acts as the student union building on Northampton University's Waterside campus. So the site of the stadium lies beneath new university buildings.

Late at night, some students swear, you can still hear excited dogs squealing and railway workers cheering their fancies home.

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