Welcome to Brooklands Fun Day at Brooklands here at the Community Park. The fun day was born from an initiative I had as Local Ward Councillor back in the beginning of 2104 following a very successful live event after the Olympics Games in 2012. 
This opened up an opportunity to bring local business and the community together in a promotional, pro-active and fun way on this historical and well documented former race track and aerodrome.

Brooklands was the birthplace of British motorsport, aviation and the site of many engineering and technological achievements throughout eight decades of the 20th century. 
Brooklands took its name from Robert del Brok who in the 12th century was Lord of the local Manor, and prior to becoming a racetrack had been bought in 1830 by Locke-King’s father from the Duke of York.   Hugh Locke-King (1856 – 1926) devised and built the world’s first banked motor racing circuit here in 1906 and it became the home of British motor racing until 1939. He was inspired to build the 3.25 mile (5.23 kilometer) long oval banked racetrack by the fact that early attempts at racing motor vehicles on British public roads had been thwarted by officialdom.

Locke-King had experienced the excitement of the Targa Florio in Italy and the French Grand Prix, both raced on public roads with the complicit approval of the authorities. Frustrated by the lack of opportunity for British drivers to gain experience because of the strictly imposed 20 mph (32 kph) speed limit, he devised the track initially as a testing ground to enable vehicles to be safely driven at speed. The banking provided the camber to keep the cars on the track without having to slow at the turn at each end, and at 100 feet (30 meters) wide and 30 feet (9 meters) high in places also provided a great track for spectators to come and watch. So, the first spectator friendly course was built for a cost of £150,000, taking nine months and the labour of 700 workmen to achieve.

Brooklands-based aircraft companies such as Bleriot, Hawker, Sopwith, Martinsyde, and Vickers were key players in the early years of aviation and were crucial to its early development. The ‘Daily Mail Round Britain Air Race’ of 1911 started and finished at Brooklands, and both the event and the location later influenced the theme of the classic British film comedy, Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines. Visitors can see many displays and exhibits portraying the contribution made by Brooklands to the British aircraft industry in both world wars, and also in the post-war years with Vickers and later the British Aircraft Corporation and British Aerospace at the Brooklands Museum.

Vickers purchased the site in 1946 for £330,000, which allowed them to produce civilian aircraft. The most notable of these was the Vickers Viscount, of which 444 were built between Brooklands and Bournemouth. In 1959 the Vanguard was test flown from Brooklands. In 1962 the test flight for the prototype VC10 also took place at Brooklands, and subsequently all 53 production VC10’s were flown out of Brooklands before being completed and test flown at Wisley. British Aerospace closed the airfield in 1982.

Mercedes Benz purchased the remainder including the former runway in 2006 for their Mercedes Benz World Brand Experience site which proudly sits at the far North-Eastern end. As the land was in the Green Belt a condition was applied that 60 acres be handed over for community use to Elmbridge Borough Council, now the official owners of the park. Proudly guarding the entrance to the park is the 4/10 scale British Airways model Concorde which stood at the entrance to the tunnel at Heathrow Airport and it is estimated seen by as a many as 400 million travellers. This was kindly donated to the Brooklands Museum by British Airways on the retirement of Concorde flights.
Peter Harman