When I posted a USAAF aerial photograph of Market Harborough during the war, I noted the large oval in Welland Park and asked if it was a long-vanished cycle track.
The answer to my question is yes. There was a cinder track laid out in the park and both runners and cyclists has plans for it, but they appear to have come to nothing.
Here's the Market Harborough Advertiser and Midland Mail for 9 February 1934 reporting on a meeting of the urban district council:
The Welland Park Scheme
The Clerk said the Surveyor and he attended the Ministry and from what happened there he thought there was a chance of getting the application for the Welland Park through, and he thought it would be as well to pass a resolution that the matter go forward.
The Surveyor (Mr. Barlow) said he had prepared plans and estimates which he described. The plans included a cinder running track (five laps to the mile). This would not expensive be an job as it could be made largely with clinkers from the destructor.
The ministry in question was the Ministry of Health and 'the destructor' would have been apparatus used to burn domestic refuse collected by the council.
Then on 4 June 1937 the same newspaper's Sports Gossip column by R.H.O. reported:
I hear that several enthusiastic sportsmen would very much like to see an Amateur Athletic Club formed in Market Harborough. They are willing, providing there is sufficient interest in the project, to set about getting a club formed right away.
With an officially recognised A.A.A. track in the Welland Park there would be no difficulties regarding facilities for holding trials and training. Already the Urban Council has been approached with a view to having the track banked and widened and there seems no reason why a club should not be run on successful lines.
We have rivalry in cricket and football between the factories in the town - why not include running, walking and cycling? Personally. I am pretty certain that we have some really useful athletes in Market Harborough.
I have been asked not to divulge any names this week, but it can be taken from me that the sportsmen interested in the project are willing to spare no effort to get a club going. They are anxious to get the feeling of the youth of the town, and anyone wishing to give them support should drop a line to this office. A meeting is to be called shortly.
But on 2 July R.H.O. had to report:
With enquiries still coming in it is no exaggeration to state that within a few weeks the newly-formed Market Harborough and District Athletic and Cycling Club, will be able to boast of a membership of something like 70.
Members of the temporary committee of the Club inspected the track in the Welland Park this week. The track in its present condition is not very suitable for athletics. and could be very much improved.
The main path leading from the Farndon-road entrance of the Park, which cuts through the track at two points, needs diverting and on top of this the track not wide enough.
And if you study the photo in my earlier post you will see the path doing just that.
I can find no report suggesting that any improvements were carried out, and then came war. On 7 March 1941 the newspaper reported a meeting of the council's water and markets committee. The committee's chairman and the chairman of the council had inspected Welland Park:
They recommended that all the area inside the running track be ploughed and used for growing potatoes, and it was recommended that this be done, and that the seed potatoes be purchased without delay.
The report was adopted.
There was to be no post-war renaissance of the track. On 10 December 1948 the paper's In and About Harborough column recorded:
It was news to me - as it may be to you - that there is (or perhaps was) a cycle racing track in Welland Park, Market Harborough.
According to some of the cyclists who were attending Welland Valley Wheelers' annual dinner at Harborough on Saturday, the track was laid out. but was used only once - for the Coronation sports rather over ten years ago.
They think the track could be restored and banked with very little expense - cinders and other waste could be used they sav - and that it could be put back into commission if a path in the park were slightly diverted.
For the last reference I can find to the track came only a week later, in a long letter about the town's sporting facilities by Benny Foster:
When the Welland Park was laid out, a running and cycle track was included, now sadly overrun by weeds, and to all intents and purposes merely a footpath.
Benny Foster, incidentally, was not just a writer of letters to his local paper. He became manager of the British international cycling team and brought the world cycling championships to Leicester in 1970.
The track may have come to nothing, but I want to end by paying tribute to foresight of the old urban district council in providing such a park for the town. When I came to Harborough in 1973, there were still parkkeepers employed there and two putting courses.
The photo at the top shows the bandstand and tearooms in the park, which now houses a café again after many years. When the sun shines you can see what an attractive example of Thirties architecture it is.
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