Britain’s northernmost venue closes, but Fife races on

Britain’s northernmost point-to-point venue at Balcormo Mains, one of the oldest courses in the country, has staged its final meeting.

Some 40 miles north east of Edinburgh by road, Balcormo Mains (pictured above) first staged racing in the 1920s and has at times attracted large – and flamboyant – crowds to the Fife Hunt meeting. However, the cost of running a venue for a single fixture each year and the loss of two key fund-raising events due to Covid-19 meant the hunt had to consider the viability of continuing racing at the venue.

In 2021 the Fife meeting will move to the Young family’s Overton Farm venue at Crossford in South Lanarkshire – it has become Britain’s northernmost point-to-point course. The Fife will share the venue with the Lanarkshire & Renfrewshire and Eglinton meeting and is scheduled to race there on Saturday, April 24.

The paddock at Overton, which will host next season’s Fife meeting (Ce)

Fiona Drysdale, secretary of the Fife meeting, said: “It’s sad to leave Balcormo Mains, but it’s one of those things and we have to move on. Losing two fund-raising events this year, including the point-to-point which was due to be held in late April, pushed the hunt into a financial corner, and it was decided to reduce the risk of staging meetings in the future.”

Overton was opened by farmer and permit holder Willie Young in 2004. It is some 70 miles south-east of Balcormo Mains, and Drysdale said: “All options were considered, but Overton is the closest existing point-to-point venue and the Young family, in particular Wassels Young and his sister-in-law Maggie, have been very accommodating and friendly.

“The point-to-point community in general have been very supportive of the move, and we hope to attract more runners by being that bit further south. The course is not far from the M74.

“We would like to put on record our enormous thanks to Valerie Gilmour and her family for their tremendous support and help during the many years that we raced over their land at Balcormo Mains.”

Willie Young, who founded Overton, now Britain’s northermost point-to-point venue (Ce)

The loss of a unique venue at the northern end of the British point-to-point scene cannot be disguised as anything but disappointing, although the fact that the fixture has not been lost and the Fife Hunt continues racing is a plus. The costs of maintaining Overton as a course will now be shared, which makes both meetings more viable.

Founded in 1786, the Fife Hunt first held a race meeting in 1892 and moved to Sir John Gilmour’s Montrave Estate, the home of Balcormo Mains, in 1924. During the 1950s, and for several decades following, the annual point-to-point became one of Scotland’s social events of the year, popular with the well-heeled who would arrive by Bentley or Rolls Royce and bring members of their domestic staff – including butlers, chauffeurs and footmen – to wait upon them.

The most recent Sir John Gilmour, a keen rider who won the Grimthorpe Gold Cup in 1975 on Falling Leaves, sat on the sport’s influential Point-to-Point Liaison Committee (a forerunner to the Point-to-Point Authority Board) and for 40 years was a driving force in maintaining the meeting, but he died prematurely in 2013 following a lengthy illness, and racing did not take place at the venue for a couple of years prior to his death.

The final meeting at Balcormo Mains took place on Easter Saturday, 2019. Fiona Drysdale said: “We had a wonderful meeting on that occasion. In hindsight it was a very good note on which to end.”