-- FEATURE -- A brighter future for Herne Hill Velodrome?

Saving a Sports Heritage Site - The Home of Track Cycling in London
Friends of Herne Hill Velodrome Website www.HerneHillVelodrome.org.uk

VELODROME: An oval track used for bicycle track racing is called a velodrome (VELL-o-drome).
SYLLABICATION: ve�lo�drome
NOUN: A sports arena with a banked oval track for bicycle and motorcycle racing.
ETYMOLOGY: French v�lodrome, blend of v�locip�de, and -drome, racecourse (from Latin -dromus; see �drome)

Dulwich's secret heritage - London's Historic Cycle Track
The Velodrome's location is a well-kept secret in Dulwich. Bill Wright who manages the site says that he has met people who live in the same road who didn't know it was there! On the map it's called Herne Hill Stadium.

It's hidden away behind the large houses of Burbage Road SE24, and the narrow entrance between the houses is easy to miss, especially when the flag that marks the entrance isn't flying.

Built in 1891 Herne Hill Velodrome is one of the few remaining purpose built Victorian sports stadiums in London, and sadly now the only remaining cycle racing track in the Capital. Track cycle racing was however flourishing in Herne Hill twenty years the before the surrounding houses were developed!

The popularity of cycling In the 1880s and 90s cycling was a booming sport - and cycle clubs thrived. By 1890 there were 5 cycle tracks in London. Cycling is flourishing again today - a recent MORI poll has identified a cycling boom among schoolchildren, placing cycling ahead of swimming and even football as the most popular after-school activity - yet across the UK cycle tracks are under threat of closure.

Herne Hill -Velodrome Trust
Fortunately for London and cyclists in the UK, Southwark Council are well advanced with plans to establish The Herne Hill Velodrome Trust - which will regenerate this Sports Heritage Site and manage it independently as a cycling-led sports charity, and they are working closely with the freeholders of the site - The Dulwich Estate - and Sport England to achieve this end.

The regeneration proposals are designed to avoid its closure and secure a financially sustainable future focussed on cycling & complementary recreational use for this famous 120 year old athletic venue.

Excellence: A World Class centre for cycle sport linked working with both specialist sports colleges and schools across London. A vibrant popular year-round venue for cycle sport in the S-E region, hosting National and International level events.

Inclusiveness: A Southwark and South-London cycling venue that effectively links its activities to local communities, is socially inclusive and responsive to the diversity of Southwark's neighbourhoods, and those of adjacent Boroughs.

The Friends of Herne Hill Velodrome organiasation want to see Herne Hill's 120 year athletic tradition continue - focused on cycling and complementary sporting activities - and because the Velodrome's regeneration has significant potential to benefit local people its Friends want to see these proposals succeed, and avoid the very real threat of closure if current plans are stopped. Details of how to join the Friends can be found at the end of this article.

The Home of Track Cycling
Although Herne Hill Velodrome is internationally regarded as the home of track cycling, its reputation is sadly not yet as widely known as comparable Sports Heritage Sites such as Wimbledon of Twickenham. Herne Hill Velodrome Trust intends to put this right.

CYCLING AT HERNE HILL "The famous track of the London County Club here depicted is situated at Herne Hill - close to and, indeed, almost in London. The greatest possible care has been taken to produce a path embodying the latest results of scientific calculation and practical experience, and in consequence the 'records', which have been accomplished on this favourite path, are innumerable."

Herne Hill's History
The full history of Herne Hill Velodrome has yet to be written, and it is hoped that readers will use the Velodrome's website to contribute to the following incomplete account. The following account relies principally on Brian Green's History of Dulwich, and Michael Moor's notes on the first cycle racing tracks in London.

A state of the art Victorian facility -- There was a proliferation of cycling/athletic tracks built in the early 1890s and Herne Hill was not the first cycle track built in London, which was at Paddington in 1888 and which has now sadly been sold to property developers. Herne Hill was built in order to provide a safe, state of the art banked cycle track for the south London counties. There was at the time a 4 laps to the mile irregularly shaped slightly banked track at Nunhead, and un-banked cinder track at Crystal Palace.

The track's brainchild was a celebrated amateur racing cyclist, George Lacey Hillier, who, with the support of local cycling clubs - one of which -Dulwich Paragon - still exists today - floated a company called the London County Athletics Ground Limited to construct the first track in 1891. The cycle track was of rolled ballast with a cinder running track inside and rugby pitch in the centre.

At this time there were no houses surrounding the site, and the railway viaduct between North Dulwich and Tulse Hill, built 1864, formed the western boundary of the site just as it does today Within 5 years the track had been upgraded to a shallow banked track with partially wood boarded straights and radially wood boarded bankings, on a concrete base, as a close examination of the 1897 photograph shows. It is not know how long this wooden surface was retained.

It no longer features in the 1911 photograph of the sprint finish of a race at the famous Good Friday Meeting. The magnificent stand of mature Oak trees that provide a fitting background to the line of tall flagpoles around the track perimeter - a tradition that has not been retained in the present day track - were still there in the spring of 1911.

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� British Cycling 2002/2003