History
Following the closure of the former RAF Station at Andreas to motor-cycle racing in 1954 and to celebrate the success of George 'Sparrow' Costain and Derek Ennett at the 1954 Manx Grand Prix it was proposed at a meeting of the Southern Motor-Cycle Club (SMCC) that a motor-cycle circuit would be developed in area around Castletown in the Isle of Man. The proposal of a "South TT" using roads around the new Castletown A5 by-pass and the Billown Mansion was met with a luke-warm response and an application for a grant of £500 for race expenditure was rejected by the Tynwald Race Committee in April 1955. A grant of £500 from local business including T.H.Coleburn Ltd for a public address system enabled the first Southern 100 Road Race meeting to be scheduled for July 1955 as a club motor-cycle racing meeting.
The Billown Circuit became a regional registered circuit in 1956 and a National Racing circuit in 1957 with a maximum of 45 entries per class In 1988 a new race meeting was introduced with the Pre-TT Classic Races followed by the National Road Races in 1990. The re-introduction of two-stroke motor-cycle racing at the 2008 Isle of Man TT with a Lightweight TT and Ultra-Lightweight TT race, the first time the Billown Circuit hosted Isle of Man TT races as part of the 2008 National Road Race meeting.
Read more about this topic: Billown Circuit
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“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“What you don’t understand is that it is possible to be an atheist, it is possible not to know if God exists or why He should, and yet to believe that man does not live in a state of nature but in history, and that history as we know it now began with Christ, it was founded by Him on the Gospels.”
—Boris Pasternak (1890–1960)
“American time has stretched around the world. It has become the dominant tempo of modern history, especially of the history of Europe.”
—Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978)