Training winners on the Downland

Walking the Ridgeway from Wayland's Smithy to Letcombe Castle one's eye is struck by the miles and miles of rolling downland. It is turf, so well drained by the chalk beneath, which caused the area to become the home of so many racing stables. A horse's legs are the most easily damaged part of its anatomy and can be ruined by galloping on hard or very soft ground, so that the ready availability of well--drained, springy turf is essential. It is not surprising that there are now some forty training stables in the Lambourn area alone and only Newmarket can boast a larger equine population.

Newmarket's rise to fame owed much to royal patronage, Charles II being a most ardent adherent of racing which was starting to become a popular sport in the 1660s. About 1830 owners started to move their horses away from Newmarket because they thought that the going on the gallops became too firm in the summer, and in consequence too many horses broke down. In fact this may have been more often due to the severe training methods of some trainers, like Bill Chifney who thought nothing of working a horse eight miles, two or even three times a week. Newmarket's loss was Berkshire's gain and the area became one of the fashionable training centres in the south of England during the middle of the century. It has remained so to this day and the Queen Mother has the majority of her jumpers trained by Fulke Walwyn at Upper Lambourn.

Before the existence of the railways, horses had to be walked to race meetings which obviously limited the courses at which they could run, unless the process was to take many days, which was hardly calculated to do them much good. In 1836, that tough mare Cyprian trained by John Scott at Malton was walked 500 miles on her month--long journey to and from Epsom where she won the Oaks. The credit for the first "horsebox" is generally given to a Mr Territt who in 1816 fitted springs to a bullock cart and conveyed his horse "Sovereign" at the rate of forty miles a day from Worcestershire to Newmarket to run in the Two Thousand Guineas.

Artist's impression of Mr Territt's bullock drawn horsebox
Beryl Maile in Aspects of the Wessex Ridgeway

His example does not seem to have been copied, however, until 1836 when Lord George Bentinck landed a coup with his horse "Elis" in the St Leger at Doncaster by constructing a van drawn by six post--horses, which did the journey from Goodwood in three days, a feat which the bookmakers of the day had thought impossible.

Although the magnet of the Lambourn chalk turf has existed for thousands of years, the other essential for racing on a national scale, namely quick and comfortable transport, has only existed since 1898 when the Lambourn Valley Railway was inaugurated. The advent of the motorised horsebox and the motorways has made possible the great expansion in the number of training establishments in the area during the last forty years. Nowadays it is the turf and the trainers' and jockeys' skill which determine whether the winner of the Derby or the Grand National is trained at Lambourn.

Dick Rykens
Lambourn