Finishing line: the Gordon Pirie finial, now in place in Coulsdon
Finally, the lovely people who manage the Croydon Art Trail have managed to get Gordon Pirie across their finishing line.
Pirie was one of Britain’s greatest sports stars of the mid-20th Century, the distance runner winning an Olympic silver medal at the 1956 Melbourne Games and setting five world records at 3,000 and 5,000 metres.
Dubbed “Puff-puff” by the newspapers of the day, as much for the manner he inflated his cheeks when racing as for his steam engine-like front-running style, Pirie was celebrated for his great races against the likes of Emil Zatopek, the Czech who won three Olympic gold medals in 1952, and the Soviet, Vladmir Kuts, who beat the Briton to gold at 5,000 in Melbourne.
Pirie was such a big name, he was voted as BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 1955.
Pirie even got his own entry in the Guinness Book of Records, which reckoned that this hard-training runner, who would cover miles up and down the hills of Happy Valley, managed to cover 216,000 miles in 40 years to 1981 – meaning that Pirie must have been clocking up 100 miles a week in training decades before high mileage running became common among distance runners.
Silver lining: world record-holder Pirie (left) at the 1956 Olympic 5,000m medal ceremony with Kuts (centre) and his SLH clubmate, Derek Ibbotson
And a Coulsdon finial has been placed near the Lion Green Road bus stop on the Brighton Road – close to the old Comrades Club from where Pirie and his club mates from South London Harriers would change and go for long, stamina-building runs on Farthing Downs.
Pirie was an impressive cross-country runner, three times winning the tough, nine-mile English National title. He was versatile, too, managing to clock a sub-four-minute mile and, after his track career was over, won the first two British orienteering championships, in 1967 and 1968.
Pirie died, aged 60, in 1991.
He already has a blue plaque, placed by the Bourne Society outside the now re-named Coulsdon Club. But his finial seals Pirie’s place as one of the great figures in Coulsdon’s history.
The Pirie finial is the 10th in a series on the Coulsdon Art Trail, which commemorates the area’s history.
Others include James Cooper, a notorious highway man who was arrested, tried and executed at Smitham Bottom in August 1749, and the 1788 visit to the town of the Prince of Wales, who was to become King George IV, in order to watch an illegal boxing match.
Well-remembered: the Bourne Society Pirie plaque outside the Coulsdon Club, from where he trained and raced
Finials are small, stylised metal models, and have been placed at the top of signposts and lampposts around Coulsdon town centre. The first three were unveiled in early 2021, with a further two put in place in 2022.
Two more went up during 2023, including one to commemorate John Logie Baird.
“These finials commemorate the history of Coulsdon and Smitham Bottom and were selected from a list of suggestions that were put together from a public consultation by East Coulsdon Residents’ Association,” Charlie King, one of the movers behind the project, said.
The other Coulsdon Art Trail finials include portrayals of Cuthraed, the Saxon warrior after whom Coulsdon is named; a flower, the greater yellow rattle, which grows prolifically on Farthing Downs and Happy Valley; the Surrey Iron Railway, Britain’s first public railway; the first cricket match on Lion Green in 1739; and Emmeline Pankhurst, who spoke on Votes from Women in April 1911 at Smitham Parish Hall.
Coulsdon Art Trail and the finials have been put together by East Coulsdon RA with additional donations from individuals and businesses of Coulsdon.
If you would like to donate please contact East Coulsdon RA at info@eastcoulsdon.co.uk
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in the late 1950s Gordon Pirie used to the grounds of Trinity School in North End Croydon to train in his lunchtimes sometimes. I think he worked for an insurance company in Croydon. He had been a pupil at Purley Grammar in Old Coulsdon.