Trainers Tom McGovern and Gerry Enright are helping to keep alive a slice of Sussex racing history.

The pair both have their strings at the old Lewes racecourse which until the mid-Sixties was a popular track for flat racing.

It staged three two-day meetings during the summer and its August fixture helped form the Sussex fortnight with both Goodwood and Brighton.

But in 1963 Lewes featured on a Levy Board hit list of courses which were to have their financial support axed.

It needed a substantial capital injection if racing was to continue and the money was not forthcoming. In September the following year the town staged its last horse race.

Local trainer Tom Masson sent out the winner and Australian jockey Scobie Breasley, the track's leading rider, also rode a winner.

Racing in Lewes is recorded as far back as 1727 and one of its early stars was a horse called Dormouse which won the King's 100 Guineas for six-year-old horses. The runners had to carry 12st in two four-mile heats.

The course itself was a two-mile horseshoe with a climb of 100ft up the Sussex Downs in the first half mile. Races were later restricted to a maximum of 12 furlongs.

The Lewes Handicap became the track's major event and in 1897 it was won by the best horse to race there, Merman, a winner of the Cesarewitch, Goodwood Cup and Ascot Gold Cup.

Lewes' record books also show a three-way dead heat in the five furlong Astley Stakes of 1880 with another dead heat for fourth place.

As well as Breasley, champion jockey Gordon Richards had a good record at Lewes, as did the well-known Epsom trainer Ron Smyth.

The track became a training centre a year after its closure with former Tote buildings being converted into a yard and the weighing room turned into a house. In 1966 Gordon Smyth sent out the Derby winner Charlottown from Lewes.

Latterly, the Lewes grand-stand was redeveloped and houses now stand on the site but with McGovern and Enright the old racecourse continues as a base for racing in Sussex.

TOP TIP Tom McGovern's Eastwell Hall, a winner over hurdles and on the flat, is the best horse stabled at Lewes and should make his mark in handicap hurdles this season. The five-year-old ran reasonably on his seasonal debut at Cheltenham but missed a run last week when racing was abandoned.

- Frank Crowhurst