The Ghost Race
By David Pickles

Aub Lawson Picture courtesy of John Chaplin

A bit of unique history here, from the very peak of the "Golden Age" of speedway, 1948 - when crowds were measured in the tens of thousands every week. The two clubs featured here, West Ham and New Cross got weekly crowds of around 45-50,000 and 25-30,000 respectively each Tuesday/Wednesday during the season.

During the post-war years it was often debated about which was the "fastest track on average". All tracks had different lengths of course, like now, but there was often fierce debate about it at West Ham and New Cross as they represented the biggest track in the UK, West Ham, and the smallest, New Cross.

West Ham at the time was a massive 440 yds - quarter of a mile - and New Cross was known as "The Frying Pan" at just 262 yds. The interest was that if a lone rider did four laps at each track at exactly the same time and the times taken, then divided by the yardage and allowing for differing track conditions which track would prove to be the fastest? On Wednesday 24th March 1948 that debate was finally about to be settled, and it would be settled in a live broadcast on the BBC Light Programme (now Radio 2). This was during the days when the BBC would broadcast a live speedway meeting each week on the radio which would draw an audience of up to a million listeners. That gives the modern day reader some idea of just how massive a sport speedway was in the post-war years. .

Aub Lawson lined up at the starting gate at the gigantic Custom House arena and Ron Johnson, the "King" of New Cross did the same down the Old Kent Road. The BBC sent Raymond Glendenning to be the compere of the "race", and various technical boffins were in attendance at both tracks to set up the timing equipment, measure the depth and dampness of each track and calculate the official respective speeds.

Both riders lined up at their respective gates and with a time signal from the BBC studio which set the tapes to rise, they both dropped the clutch and were away.

The "winner" of the theoretical race was Aub Lawson in a time of around 75 secs, Johnson pencilling in around 60. When everything was taken into account, not least the length of the tracks it was judged that Lawson was indeed on the "fastest" track out of the two. In no small measure this was helped by the long majestic straights at Custom House and the wide sweeping bends, whereas the much smaller New Cross track was more technical and difficult to negotiate, even though on the surface lap times were much quicker.

West Ham and New Cross were fierce rivals, almost literally over the river from each other. The West Ham fans often derided the New Cross track as being too tight and technical and said that Custom House was faster and "for the purist", whereas the Old Kent Rd faithful thought the West Ham track too big and "boring", even though of course both tracks had things in their favour and against them. New Cross at the time was promoted by one Freddie Mockford who invented the starting gate back in 1933, and ironically it was him that wound up top flight league speedway at New Cross midway through the 1953 season with the oft quoted famous sentence "I'm sorry but Division One speedway has to come to a sudden end here at New Cross as we cannot sustain the business with crowds of just 13,000 each week".

Laughable today and promoters would bite their own hands off for that sort of attendance, but it shows you how different things are now. West Ham closed in 1955, reopened in 1964 until 1971 and ran for just 6 weeks in the second division as Romford Bombers in 1972. New Cross reopened in 1959 and ran in 1960, reopening in 1963 until closing again mid-season and that was the end of the bikes for good down the Old Kent Road.

Both sites are long gone now of course, West Ham being a huge housing estate, and New Cross literally a public park, although careful examination of some of it can still reveal the outline of a couple of the bends and old terrace. A trip between the current Millwall Den and the railway near where the Old Den was will locate it.

Back in 1948 London ran top flight speedway every night of the week, Wimbledon Monday, West Ham Tuesday, New Cross Wednesday, Wembley Thursday and Harringay Friday.

Oh how lucky those supporters were - if only they but knew it!

This article was first published on 8th February 2026