Speed trialling in this part of Lincolnshire is older than most of the machines that come to it. Here is where it began, and why we do it.
The Heritage Of
Motorsport
Speed trials flourished across Britain from 1901, driven by owners and manufacturers who wanted to prove what their machines could do — and by a public that had never seen anything move so fast.
Grimsthorpe’s own chapter opens in 1903, when the Lincolnshire Automobile Club held the first timed runs in the old deer park. Raymond Mays’ father raced here in 1904. We have been trying to do the memory justice since 2018.
The oldest motoring club in Britain
The Lincolnshire Automobile Club was formed on 4 January 1901 and is recognised as the oldest motoring club in Britain. By the end of that first year it had fifty-three members. Its first Chairman was C. W. Pennell, then Mayor of Lincoln.
Sir Hickman Bacon served as the club’s president until his death in 1945 — one of those figures who quietly kept a whole regional motoring culture alive.
Built In Bourne
England’s answer to Bugatti
English Racing Automobiles was founded in November 1933 in Bourne, a few miles from where you are standing, by Humphrey Cook, Raymond Mays and Peter Berthon. Their ambition was straightforward and enormous: build a British single-seater that could take on the best in Europe.
The first ERA, chassis R1A, ran at Brooklands on 22 May 1934. Through the rest of the decade ERA dominated voiturette racing, its designs developing from the original A-Type through the B, C and D. For a small works in a Lincolnshire market town to have taken on Bugatti and Alfa Romeo — and beaten them — remains one of the finest stories in British motorsport.
Drivers who inspire us
Hellé Nice
In 1929 she set a women’s world land speed record at the Autodrome de Montlhéry. Bugatti signed her in 1931 to drive a Type 35C in five French Grands Prix. She raced hard, in an era that gave women no encouragement whatsoever to do so.
Kay Petre
All four foot ten of her, and the fastest woman at Brooklands. She took the outer circuit lap record in 1934 at 129.58mph in a Delage, then raised it to 134.75mph in 1935.
Raymond Mays
Co-founder of ERA and a competitor for thirty years, most famously at Shelsley Walsh in his Brescia Bugattis. His family’s connection to Grimsthorpe goes back to his father’s run here in 1904.
Stanley Woods
He debuted at the Isle of Man TT in 1921 and finished fifth in the 1922 Junior TT on a Cotton. What followed made him one of the greatest motorcycle racers of the age.
Where it happened
Brooklands
Built near Weybridge in Surrey in 1907, the world’s first purpose-built motor racing circuit — 2.75 miles of banked concrete. Its last race was run in 1939, and motorsport has been chasing its ghost ever since.
Syston Park
A circuit laid out along the estate road in 1926, where motorcycle racing drew crowds of up to thirty thousand. Estate roads and speed have a long history together in this county.
The estate
Grimsthorpe Castle has been our home since 2018. Three thousand acres, a red deer park, a great natural lake and the castle itself — a backdrop no purpose-built circuit will ever manage.
Your ticket includes admission to the house and to the Capability Brown gardens, and we would encourage you to use it. Few events let you spend the morning watching a supercharged ERA and the afternoon in an eighteenth-century landscape garden.
From The Archive
Photography from previous years
Relive the magic of our previous events through these cinematic stills. With thanks to Peter Clitheroe for capturing them.
