Most readers will be familiar with the popular Croxton Park Hotel in High Street and what is now regarded as Northcote, but most will not be aware of the rich sporting traditions of the hotel and its grounds.
Like others in Melbourne – Epsom, Ascot and Sandown – it was another track that took its name from an old English course – in this case, the Croxton-park Jockey Club in England; an institution that began in the early 19th century and remained a permanent fixture in the hunting calendar until the First World War. The English club was credited with holding the first Grand National Hunt Steeplechase in 1846, and supporters hoped to make it a permanent racing fixture but despite their best efforts, the Grand National never returned to their course.
The site of the course is easily identifiable in today’s context as being behind the Croxton Park hotel on the western side of High Street, Northcote between Kemp street and Woolton Avenue. The hotel had a long sporting history, both before and after the few years it operated in conjunction with the racing club.
It was one of the first hotels outside of the central Melbourne having being established as the Pilgrim Inn by Robert Duff in 1844 to service travellers and bullock teams travelling to and from the Plenty Valley, Melbourne’s first “food bowl” – Northcote’s population at the time would probably not have been much more that 20 or so people.
The Inn was purchased in 1865 by Josiah Goyder, who painted the single story structure bright red and renamed it as The Red House. Under this name, it gathered some fame as one of Melbourne’s leading homes for pigeon shooting matches as well as for “pedestrianisms” (athletics), velocipedes events (cycling) and, of course, horse racing on an impromptu basis,
The hotel took on its current name in 1869 when it was purchased by a syndicate headed by a leading English billiards player, William Charles Hitchin in February, 1869.
A new 12-furlong track (roughly the same size as Flemington) was constructed to the south-west of the hotel with plans to hopefully make the venue a destination second only to the latter course where the Victoria Racing Club held meetings a best once or twice a month).
The club aimed to run a meeting approximately every two months, but unfortunately for Hitchin and his partners, the remoteness of the course from Melbourne and a series of meetings disrupted by terrible weather conditions saw racing cease after a meeting on 14 July, 1873 which had had to been postponed no less than three times because of inclement weather.
Many of the old Red House sports were revived as the syndicate struggle to stay afloat, not the least of the features the unlikely appearance in a steeplechase on 17 August, 1872 of Caoutchouc, “The Hairless Horse“.
Following the syndicate’s collapse, a large section of the land was sold off in September, 1873, but the grounds close to the hotel on the northern side remained as a recreation reserve for another thirty years, hosting concerts, cricket, junior football, athletic meetings and coursing events. There is a suggestion that the grandstand and other racing fixtures were sold for a new racecourse at Caulfield.
Although the oldest of the suburban courses we have covered, there remains a an anecdotal, but probably accurate guide as to its layout :
“The stand was less than 100 feet from the winning post, running due north. After leaving the “Red House” panels, the course ran straight for some distance, then curved up towards Yan Yean tramway, now St. George’s Road, running alongside this for nearly a quarter of a mile, then curved down the hill towards the Hon. F. E. Beaver’s paddock (which was south of the position of Beaconsfield Parade) where the famous stone wall stood for steeplechasing purposes, alongside Beaver’s fence, then curved into the straight … The back or south-western portion of the course was not very far from the present pony racing course” W. G. Swift, “History of Northcote”, 1928
The hotel and its grounds of the Randall family in 1890 and over the years they rebuilt some of the early sporting traditions on the area immediately north of the hotel to Woolton Avenue.
Although obviously too small for hores racing, pigeon shooting, hare coursing, athletics and junior football and cricket all had their days at Croxton Park, the Ranall family at one stage even offering it’s use as a senior cadet drill ground after compulsory military training was introduced in 1912. (The offer was quickly rejected by the Defence Department, instead a drill hall was erected in Simpson street and opened in mid-1914).
From 1909 until 1914, Croxton Park was the home ground for the Northcote Football Club in the Victorian Football Association and the Randall built training rooms at Croxton and a modest grandstand (later described by former Northcote, Fitzroy and Preston player, Horrie Jenkin as “more like a cow shed)”.
Following a couple of unsavoury incidents either fairly or unfairly associated with the ground’s proximity to the hotel, the V.F.A. forced the club after the end of the 1914 season to move to the Council-controlled reserve in Westgarth Street which had been extensively developed by the Northcote Cricket Club
The M.M.B.W. map of 1908 below shows the area with the hotel and its outbuildings shown in the south-east corner, but prior to the construction of the additional facilities erected for football.
A privately-owned recreation reserve was already something of an anomaly in a rapidly growing suburban area, but the site’s fate was further sealed with the deaths within two months of each other in 1917 of three members of the Randall family who had owned the property since the late 1880s.
Croxton Park, very much a shadow of its former glory was subdivided for residential use early in 1918.
The original project of 1869 gave the small district of Croxton an identity other than what could have become the rather bland “West Northcote”, but the venue should not be confused with the later “Fitzroy” course which briefly assumed the Croxton name when it first operated in 1891.
The image below shows the Croxton Park Hotel, 1890s – the single story structure in believed to be the original Pilgrim Inn/Red House of the 1840s
