♔ ‘Brooklands was where gentlemen risked their lives in cars made of tin, tweed and sheer bloody-minded optimism.’
Imagine a motor circuit so bonkers it needed 100 feet width to keep the cars on it.
A 30-foot-high banked curve, in 1907. Brooklands wasn’t just Britain’s answer to speed — it was the flaming question mark.
Where brave men, fast women, and absurd machines all went to dance with physics.
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1906 – Enter Hugh Locke King, a man with land, means, and a dangerous lack of concern for the laws of physics. He dreams up the world’s first purpose-built racing circuit. Surrey, obviously.
1907 – Brooklands opens with a thumping 2.75-mile oval, banks like cliffs, and a cost north of £150k – the equivalent of commissioning a few Bentleys… per lap.
1913 – Lydston Greanville ‘Cupid’ Hornsted smashes through 124mph in a 200hp Benz. Britain gasps. Tea is spilt. Speed becomes fashionable.
1926 – Brooklands hosts the very first British Grand Prix—the birth of top-hat motorsport.
1930s – Kay Petre bombs around in a V12 Delage. In pearls. Brooklands becomes the poshest death trap in England.
1939 – The War ends racing. The Luftwaffe finishes the job. Brooklands was bombed, battered, and mothballed.
Today, the Brooklands Museum preserves what’s left. The banked curve still looms – less racetrack, more reliquary.
♔ ‘Think of it as Silverstone’s louder, older uncle who drank too much and raced Sopwith Camels on weekends.’
