Spectate from the chicane at the Revival to see plenty of classic cars going sideways as they exit this infamous point of our Motor Circuit.
The first public race meeting took place in 1802 and, through the nineteenth century, ‘Glorious Goodwood,’ as the press named it, became a highlight of the summer season
One Summer, King Edward VII turned his back on the traditional morning suit, and donned a linen suit and Panama hat. Thus the Glorious Goodwood trend was born.
Testament to the 19th-century fascination with ancient Egypt and decorative opulence. The room is richly detailed with gilded cartouches, sphinxes, birds and crocodiles.
The famous fighter ace, who flew his last sortie from Goodwood Aerodrome, formerly RAF Westhampnett has a statue in his honor within the airfield.
After a fire in 1791 at Richmond House in Whitehall, London, James Wyatt added two great wings to showcase the saved collection at Goodwood. To give unity to the two new wings, Wyatt added copper-domed turrets framing each façade.
Built in 1787 by celebrated architect James Wyatt to house the third Duke of Richmond’s prized fox hounds, The Kennels was known as one of the most luxurious dog houses in the world!
A huge variety of glassware is available for each wine, all labelled by grape type to give the best flavour profile.
Our gin uses wild-grown botanicals sourced from the estate, and is distilled with mineral water naturally chalk-filtered through the South Downs.
From 2005 to present there has been a demonstration area for the rally cars at the top of the hill
Legend of Goodwood's golden racing era and Le Mans winner Roy Salvadori once famously said "give me Goodwood on a summer's day and you can forget the rest".
Nick Heidfelds 1999 (41.6s) hillclimb record was beaten after Max Chilton in his McMurtry Spéirling fan car tore it to shreds at 39.08s in 2022!
FOS Favourite Mad Mike Whiddett can be caught melting tyres in his incredible collection of cars (and trucks) up the hillclimb
A 20m woodland rue, from Halnaker to Lavant, was planted by our forestry teams & volunteers, featuring native species like oak, beech, & hornbeam
For safety reasons F1 cars can no longer do official timed runs so instead perform stunning demonstrations!
Sir Stirling Moss was one of the founding patrons of the Festival of Speed, and a regular competitor at the Revival.
The first ever horsebox was used from Goodwood to Doncaster for the 1836 St. Leger. Elis arrived fresh and easily won his owner a £12k bet.
King Edward VII (who came almost every year) famously dubbed Glorious Goodwood “a garden party with racing tacked on”.
The first ever horsebox was used from Goodwood to Doncaster for the 1836 St. Leger. Elis arrived fresh and easily won his owner a £12k bet.
King Edward VII (who came almost every year) famously dubbed Glorious Goodwood “a garden party with racing tacked on”.
Whoa Simon! A horse so determined and headstrong, he not only won the 1883 Goodwood Cup by 20 lengths, but couldn't be stopped and carried on running over the top of Trundle hill
The first public race meeting took place in 1802 and, through the nineteenth century, ‘Glorious Goodwood,’ as the press named it, became a highlight of the summer season
Leading women of business, sport, fashion and media, take part in one of the most exciting horseracing events in the world.
FOS Favourite Mad Mike Whiddett can be caught melting tyres in his incredible collection of cars (and trucks) up the hillclimb
The iconic spitfire covered almost 43,000 kilometres and visited over 20 countries on its epic journey and currently resides at our Aerodrome.
One of the greatest golfers of all time, James Braid designed Goodwood’s iconic Downland course, opened in 1914.
We have been host to many incredible film crews using Goodwood as a backdrop for shows like Downton Abbey, Hollywood Blockbusters like Venom: let there be Carnage and the Man from U.N.C.L.E.
The famous fighter ace, who flew his last sortie from Goodwood Aerodrome, formerly RAF Westhampnett has a statue in his honor within the airfield.
Ray Hanna famously flew straight down Goodwood’s pit straight below the height of the grandstands at the first Revival in 1998
The first ever round of golf played at Goodwood was in 1914 when the 6th Duke of Richmond opened the course on the Downs above Goodwood House.
One of the greatest golfers of all time, James Braid designed Goodwood’s iconic Downland course, opened in 1914.
The first ever round of golf played at Goodwood was in 1914 when the 6th Duke of Richmond opened the course on the Downs above Goodwood House.
The famous fighter ace, who flew his last sortie from Goodwood Aerodrome, formerly RAF Westhampnett has a statue in his honor within the airfield.
Ray Hanna famously flew straight down Goodwood’s pit straight below the height of the grandstands at the first Revival in 1998
Flying training began at Goodwood in 1940 when pilots were taught operational flying techniques in Hurricanes and Spitfires.
The Duke of Richmond holds the title of Duke of Richmond and Gordon. This title reflects the historical association with both the Richmond and Gordon families.
Ensure you take a little time out together to pause and take in the celebration of all the hard work you put in will be a treasured memory.
The first ever horsebox was used from Goodwood to Doncaster for the 1836 St. Leger. Elis arrived fresh and easily won his owner a £12k bet.
One of the greatest golfers of all time, James Braid designed Goodwood’s iconic Downland course, opened in 1914.
Flying training began at Goodwood in 1940 when pilots were taught operational flying techniques in Hurricanes and Spitfires.
As the private clubhouse for all of the Estate’s sporting and social members, it offers personal service and a relaxed atmosphere
The famous fighter ace, who flew his last sortie from Goodwood Aerodrome, formerly RAF Westhampnett has a statue in his honor within the airfield.
The iconic spitfire covered almost 43,000 kilometres and visited over 20 countries on its epic journey and currently resides at our Aerodrome.
Inspired by the legendary racer, Masten Gregory, who famously leapt from the cockpit of his car before impact when approaching Woodcote Corner in 1959.
Easy boy! The charismatic Farnham Flyer loved to celebrate every win with a pint of beer. His Boxer dog, Grogger, did too and had a tendancy to steal sips straight from the glass.
The iconic spitfire covered almost 43,000 kilometres and visited over 20 countries on its epic journey and currently resides at our Aerodrome.
Goodwood’s pigs are a mix of two rare breeds (Gloucester Old Spots and Saddlebacks) plus the Large White Boar.
Testament to the 19th-century fascination with ancient Egypt and decorative opulence. The room is richly detailed with gilded cartouches, sphinxes, birds and crocodiles.
From their cawing cries to their twig-etched nests, rooks are an essential part of the winter landscape. Simon Barnes pays homage to these deeply social, most misunderstood of birds
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We always have affection for birds determined to hurry on the spring. Rooks do this in a gloriously dramatic way
Rooks are many. That is the core – note this happy choice of words – of their strategy for survival. A rook’s deepest desire is to be a flock: to be one of 100 or 200 birds caw-cawing to each other as they darken the skies with flying displays that celebrate all the glories of being many.
There are three rookeries on the Goodwood Estate: one at Seeley Copse, one at Halnaker Park and one – of course – at Rookwood. All these sites are ancient woodland and Rookwood’s presence on a map of 1629 seems to imply a continuous presence of rooks for at least four centuries.
There is a knack to watching a flock of rooks. At first they seem an anarchic mass, each bird chaotically pursuing its own ends in a mad flurry of noise and activity. But watch more closely: pick out one bird from the flock and follow its movements and you realise that everything it does is associated with one other bird in the flock. Rooks are intensely social, but within that social structure they are tightly paired: mate-for-lifers whose priority is the flock of two that lies within the flock of many.
The flocks make their nests together, not in vast cities like seabirds, but in companionable treetop villages. At dusk you can hear them talking to each other – it’s been claimed they have 30 separate vocalisations – with a pleasing busyness. These are birds with a settled place in the world and a clear sense of their shared identity. In other words, we see something of ourselves in rooks.
The first thing to understand about rooks is that they’re not crows: the two species are much confused, in the past and right now. Carrion crows operate in highly mobile pairs rather than flocks. There are many versions of the saying that celebrates their differences: “Whan thass a rook thass a crow, and whan thass crows thass rooks.”
Both species caw, but they caw differently: the crow’s caw is harsh and shouty and sounds like a swearword – generally one repeated three times. The rook’s caw is more mellow, more suited to life with multiple neighbours. They look noticeably different too: crows are sleek and completely black, with a shiny black beak: rooks have a beak the colour of an old bone and it seems to take up most of their face. They are less dapper than crows, with baggy feathers and what looks like a pair of short trousers.
Rooks are essentially birds of the humanised landscape: birds of farmland. You don’t see them much in open country or in towns: but where there are fields and hedges you tend to find rooks. It follows that we have ambiguous feeling towards them. They are soothing, homely birds that are also seen as pests. At Goodwood the rooks feed copiously around the organically farmed crops, taking invertebrates from the cultivated soils, many of which are damaging to growing plants. But being omnivorous and versatile beasts, they switch to the corn itself as it ripens, and farmers find that less sympathetic. Bird-scaring is an ancient part of our culture: the scarecrow was invented not to scare carrion crows in ones and twos, but to frighten off rooks in their marauding flocks.
Yet at the same time, there is something benign about the presence of rooks. We always have an affection for birds that seem to defy the winter, birds that seem determined to hurry on the spring as fast as they can. And rooks do this in a gloriously dramatic way. Even while the branches are still bare, they’re are hard at it, building or repairing nests, sometimes filching twigs from each other – one rook rooking another rook – and generally getting their eggs laid by the end of February, in what seems an astonishing act of courage and faith.
The frost may have hardened the ground, but as you walk beneath the great trees of a rookery – elm trees, traditionally, but alas all gone now – you hear the rooks getting on with the bustling and joyous business of making more rooks, and it’s an unlucky person who fails to rejoice in such circumstances.
Ugly birds, some say, when they’re seen plain with that great beak sticking out, reminding us perhaps of our ancient fears of overwhelming nature, a terror caught for all time by the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds. But then you see a rook – or many rooks – caught in a shaft of sunlight, and the birds are lit up with iridescence, assuming a royal purple.
And then they’re off, flying to a place that might be 20 miles away – as the crow flies, and in this phrase, crow once again means rook. The air is full of their soft cawing as they travel in pairs and as many towards their distant rookery.
Simon Barnes’s book, The Meaning of Birds, is on sale now, published by Head of Zeus
This article is taken from the Goodwood magazine, Winter 2018 issue
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