Crayford Greyhound Stadium

CRAYFORD GREYHOUND STADIUM

This site is not an official website for the track shown here and is neither approved or endorsed by the stadium. I am indebted to Richard English for the scans of badges on this page.

The Crayford and Bexleyheath Greyhound Stadium was situated at 0° 10' E 51° 26' N and first operated as an NGRC track in 1935. It was to last 50 years. Its principal races were the Ike Morris Puppy Cup over 462 metres and the Crayford Vase also over 462 metres. Deel Joker won the 1981 running of the Vase in the remarkable time of 28.11 secs.

Crayford 102.JPG (6901 bytes) Crayford 103.JPG (6016 bytes)

The track closed for a brief spell on 18th May 1985, but reopened in September 1986. The principal races at the track are The Guys and Dolls, The Kent St Leger and the Golden Jacket.

Track Records, as of 1947, are shown below together with an indication of how fast the time is in comparison to other tracks, both for currently open and defunct tracks, in the UK. Ratings are between 0 and 100, where 100 is an extremely fast time and reflects the speed of the track, tightness of the circuit and quality of greyhound visiting the tracks. I am extremely grateful to Tony Nash for providing the data.
SPRINT (up to 385m) STANDARD (386-549m) DISTANCE (550-699m) EXTENDED (700-999m)
Crayford Track Records at a snapshot in time:-
STANDARD 440 yards Rovers Companion 26.02 secs Rating 1
STANDARD 500 yards Hetton Ring 28.89 secs Rating 4
STANDARD 520 yards Surplus View 30.25 secs Rating 1
Track Record as of 1980
STANDARD 462 metres Pigeon Flyer 28.04 secs Rating 26
DISTANCE 684 metres Cormacruiser 40.62 secs Rating 67

Track Records, as of September 2014
SPRINT 380 metres Kingdom Club 23.01 secs. Rating 28 27th September 2003
STANDARD 540 metres Sunshine Sophie 33.13 secs Rating 16 28th February 2004
DISTANCE 714 metres Double Take 44.57 secs Rating 21 21st February 2004
EXTENDED 874 metres Millwards Swaby 56.00 secs Rating 13 18th February 2012
MARATHON 1048 Metres Musical Fawn 68.80 secs Rating 52 22nd February 2014

I am grateful to Jon Seddon for the following link to a map showing the whereabouts of the old track
http://www.old-maps.co.uk/maps.html?txtXCoord=551390&txtYCoord=174505

This section gives a comprehensive picture of the badges produced by the track throughout the ages, but only provides the briefest of glimpses of its history. For those wishing to undertake further research we can recommend a visit to

http://astore.amazon.co.uk/wwwgreyhoundd-21 where further reading can be undertaken.

If you have rare Crayford badges and artefacts for sale then email johnwslusar@gmail.com