The venue was used for greyhound racing and speedway on weekdays[2] and had no connection with West Ham United football club, who played at the nearby Boleyn Ground, Upton Park from 1904 until 2016.

Plans for a very large stadium in a rural area near Plaistow Marsh, east of Canning Town were unveiled in the late 1920s and work began on the structure where an old sports ground (built in 1855) was situated that had belonged to the workers of the custom house of Royal Victoria Dock.

[3] The stadium was designed by Archibald Leitch,[4] responsible for most of the major football stadia at the time including Goodison Park and Highbury.

The track was lit by 70 x 750 watt lamps and used a special monorail train weighing 500lbs to carry the hare.

Biss trained a famous bitch called Bradshaw Fold when she finished runner up to Mick the Miller in the 1930 English Greyhound Derby.

[10] The Second World War forced the racing to be suspended on more than one occasion and the Canning Town area suffered terrible bombing damage due to the fact that the docks were seen as a primary target.

[11] Due to war closures West Ham lost the services of Stanley Biss who did not return deciding to stay at Clapton Stadium.

West Ham Hammers riders included Australians Bluey Wilkinson, Jack Young and Aub Lawson, Swedish riders Björn Knutson, Christer Löfqvist and Olle Nygren, Scotland's Ken McKinlay, American Sprouts Elder, and English riders Tiger Stevenson, Malcolm Craven, Eric Chitty, Tommy Croombs, John Louis, Dave Jessup and Malcolm Simmons.

The stadium could hold 120,000, but Thames shared a catchment area with Charlton Athletic, Clapton Orient, Millwall and West Ham United so it had trouble attracting crowds and created the lowest recorded attendance in Football League history when just 469 people turned up to watch Thames take on Luton Town on 6 December 1930.

Murray states that he lived at the Nottingham Arms in Plaistow close to the Custom House Stadium.

The speedway team had been evicted and the Cesarewitch was transferred to GRA sister track Belle Vue Stadium with the Cambridgeshire sent to White City.

The stadium sold for a reputed £475,000 and was subsequently demolished with housing built on the cleared site, with some streets named after former speedway stars.