Private View

A ‘you were there’ special

There is one place where history and the present day come gracefully together

Goodwood holds a special place in the hearts of British race-goers. It came to life in a grim, rationed 1948 with the explicit intention of continuing the enthusiastic pre-war spirit of Brooklands, the historic track that had not survived the Second World War. For almost two decades the new circuit produced unforgettable racing in a unique atmosphere fostered by its patron the Duke of Richmond, all set in beautiful countryside below the rolling Sussex Downs.

Recapturing that atmosphere has been one of the Revival’s great strengths, so as we approach the 2012 meeting we’ve chosen to feature some readers’ images of the past Goodwood that Lord March’s modern enterprise so faithfully echoes. Mike Compton has captured some very atmospheric moments in the paddock in the late 1950s, featuring the charismatic Archie Scott Brown in a Connaught and ‘Mr Motor Racing’ Moss collecting the Sussex Trophy in an Aston Martin DBR2. With those white picket fences and brown mechanics’ overalls, it could almost be 2012…

Roger Hoyle’s first visit to Goodwood was when his father took him to the fateful Easter 1962 meeting. Armed with a folding Kodak camera Roger snapped, among other things, the wrecked Lotus of Stirling Moss. They spectated at St Mary’s and after the racing walked to the site of Stirling’s crash. “A rather macabre side note,” he says, “is that I picked up some of the shattered fibreglass and a piece of the perspex windscreen from Stirling’s car (14-year-old schoolboys do this sort of thing!) and still have them today.”

By the time of the second meeting he has contributed, Roger had moved on to a 35mm camera and that exciting novelty, a telephoto lens. Apologising about his earlier simple Kodak, Roger says, “Some shots are rather poor quality, but at least I can say, ‘I was there’.” Which was the whole point of creating our feature in the irst place…