Bamford & Norden October 2019

From The Archives
Previous centuries have seen horse
racing in Rochdale. The first was on
Hunger Hill, later on Rooley Moor
and then on Whittaker Moss south
of Edenfield Road which must have
been quite an organised occasion as
a rudimentary grandstand on the site
collapsed leading to the death of one
Mary Sharples.
After this, races were held on Bagslate
Common where Rochdale Golf Course
now stands. In the 19th century Bagslate
was an important junction in the road out
of Rochdale, being near to a turnpike on
Edenfield Road for the route to Haslingden.
Not only were political meetings held at
Bagslate Moor (there had been a Chartist
Camp there in the 1830’s), it was common
to have it as the place for a fair with booths
and huts rented out around which jugglers,
tinkers, hawkers, toffee makers, pedlars,
pickpockets and punters mixed with the
crowd coming up from town. Part of the
early fair featured a horse race with a £10
first and a £5 second prize.
Soon the site was established as a race
course in its own right albeit rather old
fashioned even for those days, with flights
of hurdles and races taking place over
three laps of the track.
Between the 1820’s and the 1850’s races
were organised by the Rochdale Hunt,
named by some the ‘Nudger Races’ after
the leader of the hounds. The race
BAGSLATE RACES
at the beginning of July with prize money
of £50 per race and special awards of The
Manor and The Military Plates. Course
discipline was initially strict from the
stewards Edward Ball Esquire and Fred
Lees Esquire in the 1820’s and from the
Clerks of the Course Edmund Ogden or
James Pilling who was also landlord of
the Woolpack Inn at Marland. For
example, dogs straying on the course
would be destroyed immediately and
gentlemen were advised not to ride on the
course unless they were club members.
Carts were allowed on the race course
grounds but with a charge of 2/6d (12.5p)!
Visitors had to pay admission to the race
meeting but once in, there was more than
just horse racing and betting to while away
the afternoon. Many of the fair’s legitimate
booths and entertainments survived but
alongside them there was cock-fighting,
bull baits, dog fights, trail hunts and
drinking and gambling on race days, the
last public cock-fight being held in July
1828. Such activities sparked a great many
objections to the race meetings. Certainly,
the middle classes of Rochdale seemed
to dislike these peripheral events. As one
local paper put it, ‘all rapscallions and
good for nawts descended on Bagslate.’
The Sunday Schools Union had particular
objections and sent a representative group
to the race committee to put a stop to it.
Their meeting took place at the Woolpack
Inn near to Toad Lane with John Ashworth
claiming, after much prayer, that moral
meetings normally lasted three days, often
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