Clarke’s hoping for HS2 reprieve
The man in the grey suit has yet to darken the doors of Manor Farm in Whitfield. Even when he does, you somehow get the feeling he won’t immediately be thrown unforgivably from the kitchen, a clipboard and laptop following swiftly over each shoulder.
It would be an understandable reaction...
Yet you are dealing with decent folk here, albeit people kept largely like mushrooms, and in the dark.
The racecourse that farmer Martin Clarke has slaved devotedly to building, at times almost single-handed and at a considerable personal fortune, looks like being closed down just a few years later thanks to the HS2 rail line from Birmingham to London.
You ask yourself why?
It seems the high speed link will afford a little extra luxury and time for busy executives, scything clinically through the middle of one man’s greatest life’s achievement and some of Northamptonshire’s most beautiful countryside and villages to boot.
Is it necessary?
Probably not.
Frustrated by a total lack of communication from the perpetrators of HS2, Clarke has not given up hope, while at the same time taking a realistic stand.
Indeed, upon sitting myself down at his kitchen table I am offered a mug of coffee, apparently on condition I might personally stop the steam roller.
Yet what can any mere mortal do? Nervous about expectation levels, I decline sugar.
According to Clarke and Grafton chairman Charles Dixey who quickly joins us, and whose Hunt will stage one of three of this season’s remaining fixtures at Whitfield, no-one has paid so much as a courtesy visit.
Indeed, it goes further.
Communication to those at the sharp end (and this is very sharp) is not apparently a strong suit whether your tailor fitting is pin-striped, grey, brown or otherwise.
Public meetings and a ‘Roadshow’ style HS2 promotion in nearby Brackley have failed to add to bare information and Clarke says: “I could have learned it all on the Internet.”
His team even attended a meeting with a neighbouring farmer, who from a state of blissful ignorance on arrival, discovered HS2 would cut directly through his house.
At the Roadshow, a casual enquiry to the man in the grey suit (a very nice man) engaged: “So what about Whitfield Racecourse?”
It elicited a reply: “They’ve been kept informed!”
Rich, considering Clarke was standing two feet away.
Clarke describes this frustration.
“I didn’t build the racecourse to be a 10 or 15 year wonder,” he says. “We pay our share of taxes like everyone else and this has been a lifetime ambition.
“Now it seems as though someone you know has a terminal disease. You know they will die, but it will still be a shock when it actually happens.”
The racecourse vision finally became a reality on May 17, 2009 when Whitfield staged its first meeting with racing celebrities Brough Scott and Hayley Turner in attendance to make a speech and cut a ribbon.
Its presence has been championed, most recently by a first December fixture and with further dates this season looming on March 18, April 28 and May 20.
After that, the course may get three to five years, possibly 10 if it is very lucky or the government runs out of money. Who knows in these chaotic and disastrous economic times?
New racecourses do not just happen.
Under Rules, only two have been added to the list since Taunton in 1927 and while Ffos Las continues to blossom, Great Leighs was quickly shut down.
While the addition of point-to-point courses generally demand less infrastructure (the Oakley Hunt’s move to Brafield being a case in point) the ground work is immense.
Dixey sums up the mood when he says: “Whitfield is one of the best point to point courses in the country now but let’s face it, if we put half a million people on the streets on London to try to ban fox hunting, what chance have we got?
“You have to say in the real world there is nothing we can do about it. I don’t believe we need the new rail route and exactly who will use it?
“But once you have decided the line is going to happen, you have got to accept this is the best route. It doesn’t help that both political parties are in favour.”
At times, building the racecourse has almost resembled a one man crusade or The Labours Of Hercules for Clarke.
Some 300 tons of hard core rock were needed before the appropriate topsoil for support and access roads.
Next came the small matter of installing posts and railing, before the tweaking: Moving the odd lake and adjusting a tight bend.
Hardly things you do in your sleep.
Not that Clarke and Dixey get much of that these days.
Whitfield’s only hope of long-term survival appears to lie in the chance that suitable finance will never be forthcoming.
At least if it is, Whitfield can at least look forward to staging several more years of enthusiastic action between the flags.
“I think we are talking about 2016 at the earliest if it is to go ahead at all,” said Dixey. “The Bill is not going to the Commons before 2014 so I’m sure it will take a considerable time for everything to work its way through the system.”
The short term prognosis is certainly more upbeat.
Whitfield’s meeting on Sunday March 18 (Bicester with Whaddon), Saturday April 28 (Farmers Bloodhounds) and Sunday May 20 (Grafton) see to that.
But next door to Manor Farm, a sign helpfully points out that the Rising Sun pub is temporarily closed for refurbishment.
All Martin Clarke can hope is that the sun will not be setting on his own project for good.
In the meantime he still has a dream.
He says: “We have had crowds of around 3,000 people here, but I want to see the whole field car park full one day. It would mean around 7,500 people coming along and I think it can happen...”
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