During their 35-year tenure at the Arena Essex Raceway, the Lakseside Hammers have enjoyed their fair share of success despite facing regular threats of the raceway being sold for land development.
In 2017 the property was sold to London Strategic Land Ltd. The company would then immediately lease the land back to Raceway owner Lesley Wootton to allow speedway to continue at the venue for what could be for up to two years.
Struggles
However, with the potential of having 10 home fixtures remaining of the 2018 season the Hammers have found themselves homeless following the decision not to renew the lease into 2019.
With the threat of defaulting their season, the decision was made to move temporarily to Rye House Stadium.
Moving
Hammers Community Liaison Manager Mark Sexton re-called the events of last season: “We didn’t want to move to Rye House, but we had no other choice.
“The landlords wouldn’t commit to running the number of dates we might have needed and the BSPA told us that once we have raced one fixture away from the arena, we had to race all other meetings away from home. We had such a good home track advantage at the arena so we were worried we wouldn’t have that at Rye House.”
Because of the issues the BSPA had with the owners of Rye House, BMR – the sports’ authorities – made it clear that the Hammers would be unable to use the facility for racing in 2019, forcing them to put their race licence ‘on ice’ whilst they try and re-locate and find a new home in Thurrock.
“We knew the Arena closing was always going to happen,” said Sexton.
Campaigning
The club currently have a petition set up which has already attracted over 3,000 signatures and 1,500 comments. A downloadable letter available on the club’s website makes it easy for fans to write to local MPs and Politicians stating the importance of keeping the club in the borough of Thurrock.
Sexton who heads up the campaign, said: “We have always striven to develop a good relationship with the local community. We’ve got a 35-year history in Thurrock with consistently higher attendances than any other sporting teams in the borough.
“We are the one club, one sport that can properly unite the community. We know what we want to achieve, and although we don’t know how long it will take, we’ll keep pushing to get people on-board. We want to build a new track and return Speedway and the Hammers to Thurrock.”
The Lakeside Hammers means a lot to people and the surrounding area.
A link to sign the petition is below:
https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/support-the-return-of-lakeside-hammers-speedway
