Sixty Years On . . .

display_5689f27b5a

After Brooklands Track was opened in 1907 there were complaints about the inconvenience caused to local inhabitants. These included anxiety about noise from the new Motor Course, which was described as being “like the firing of Gatling guns” by the plaintiffs but as “a threshing machine, a humming top and the buzz of a distant bee” by the defence.

Now Castle Combe circuit is in trouble, and two objectors to the noise it produces have described this as “revving engines, screaming tyres and loud-speakers which can be heard three miles away”. “Some of the noises had an undulating cadence, like the war-time air raid warning sirens”, they say. All very much as it was sixty years ago, except that loud-speakers did not interfere with the peace of 1908 Weybridge, because these did not come into use until some eighteen years later.

But Brooklands survived, until another World War broke out, and so, we hope, will Castle Combe.—W. B.