The speed bumps indicate that local drivers simply can’t resist a nice straight bit of road. They long to speed along here, just as motorcyclists and horsemen did in the 1920’s when this was a trotting and speedway track. These days the closest you’ll get to speedway  in Birkbeck Avenue is the occasional pizza delivery on a scooter. The wonderful Pathe News website has footage of racing at Greenford, click here to watch Harvest Girl set up a new world record in the guideless pony category in 1926, here to see thoroughbreds racing in 1920 and here to watch some early motorcycle racing. My partner turned up these nuggets of cinematic treasure.

Images and text ©Albertina McNeill 2012. Please do not reproduce without permission. All rights reserved. Do not add any of these images to Pinterest or similar sites as this will be regarded as a violation of copyright.

07 Aug This entry was published on August 7, 2012 at 10:03 pm. It’s filed under Places and tagged 1920's, August 2012, blog, Ealing, Greenford, heritage, history, local, London, pedestrian, photo365, photography, photos, postaday, road, society, transport. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.