Oulton Park Track Map Poster

Oulton Park is a racetrack in the landscaped park of an eighteenth-century country house. Its 4.332 km (2.69 miles) and seventeen turns run clockwise through Cheshire parkland, past a brook and an artificial lake and the ornate gates of a vanished hall, over crests and dips that have earned it comparisons with the Nürburgring Nordschleife.

The estate appears in the Domesday Book of 1086, and one family owned it for nearly 500 years. In 1944, American troops camped here before the Normandy landings, and the world heavyweight boxing champion fought exhibition bouts for them where Deer Leap is today. The camp’s roadway became the seed of the circuit, which opened in 1953 as a rarity among Britain’s new postwar tracks: a true road circuit, not a converted airfield.

The names tell the stories. Knickerbrook is said to have been christened when a blasting expert clearing tree stumps set off his first charge, a courting couple fled from the bushes, and a pair of ladies’ underwear turned up in the brook. Lodge Corner runs past the estate’s eighteenth-century gatehouse, still standing and a favorite backdrop for photographers. In between, Clay Hill climbs steeply away from the brook.

The poster numbers all seventeen turns and letters in every name, from Old Hall, which recalls the house behind the first corner, to Cascades, Lakeside, Island Bend and Deer Leap, with the shorter layouts in muted lines. Heritage, the vintage clubhouse edition, suits an estate where knights in armor have jousted at the circuit’s family day. Nine centuries of history, and the best of it takes about a minute and a half.