Inside abandoned once-iconic UK stadium with weeds growing on track after falling into disrepair | The Sun

A FORMER iconic UK stadium fell into disrepair before eventually being demolished.

It was once one of the main sites in British motorsport and greyhound racing for 94 years.

Speedway was a regular fixture at the Manchester arena from 1988 through to 2015.

But by 2020, the venue had been totally abandoned in a sad demise for the area.

And images of the derelict ground reveal how much of a state it was in before the work to destroy it got underway in May 2021.

The track was overgrown with weeds while the rail had fallen apart and broken up.

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Further footage showed the abandoned hospitality suites, empty bars, wrecked rooms and damaged ceilings stuck in time since the doors closed for the final time to the public in 2020.

Elsewhere, the betting boards started to crumble and the control room looks like something from an apocalypse movie.

The famous ground is Belle Vue Stadium – home of the Belle Vue Aces speedway team until they moved to their purpose-built national stadium in 2016.

For nearly a century, though, it was one of the key stadiums for greyhound racing.

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It staged the first race around an oval track in Britain way back in 1926.

However, when the National Asset Management Agency sold Belle Vue Stadium to Crown Oil Pension Fund in 2014 for £2.6million, a 15-year, £249,000-per-year lease back was agreed.

But the tenancy included a clause which enabled the rent to be terminated early.

And in December 2019 planning permission was granted for a new housing estate to be built on the plot.

That prompted Belle Vue's closure during the Covid pandemic before the bulldozers arrived the following year.

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