Horse racing is old; but training stables as
we know them are not. In the eighteenth century
owners had their horses prepared in their parks
by their grooms. Gradually owners noticed that
certain areas produced better training gallops
and sent their horses there. The grooms became
known as 'training grooms', a title still used
until the 1870s. Training centres began where the
tuff was best; not necessarily near the
racecourses. Malton and Middleham in Yorkshire,
Hednesford in Staffordshire, Holywell near Flint,
Bourton-on-the-Hill in Gloucestershire,
Newmarket, Epsom and other places became the
homes of several stables where the trainers
prepared horses sometimes for single owners as
'private' trainers but increasingly for several
owners as 'public' trainers. Training was a trade
and remained as such until the 1890s when an
increasing number of younger sons decided it was
a fit occupation for gentry. Respectability had
been achieved long before with John Scott (d 1871),
popularly known as 'The Wizard of the North'; he
entertained Prime Ministers at his Malton stables
and gave the definitive opinion on most subjects
within his field.
Sleepy Berkshire's part in this story was late
in starting. The Duke of Cumberland kept his
racehorses at East Ilsley but others were slower
in appreciating the chalk downs. John Stevens
came here from Bourton-on-the-Hill in the 1830s.
He retired in the 1840s and was succeeded by his
son Thomas who was to train in Berkshire for
forty years, moving the stable to Chilton in 1852.
He had for several years the largest stable in
Berkshire. Four of his sons were to train locally.
His son Tom jnr. followed him in the i88os and
his brother George succeeded Tom in 1899. Of Tom
Stevens snr. it was said that he took the Racing
Calendar to church. His oldest son, William, set
up on his own at Yew Tree Cottage, Compton, in
1871. Like his father he knew the way to make a
living was to train many mostly moderate horses
and to know when they were going to win. Both he
and his father survived with difficulty an
incident when an apprentice told the Jockey Club
he had regularly 'pulled' horses for both
trainers. During the 1890s William Stevens was
able to buy much of Compton including Roden House.
Quality as opposed to quantity at East Ilsley
came from James Dover who moved here from
Hednesford in 1862. He saddled a string of
classic winners including Lord Lyon, winner of
the Triple Crown in 1866. Unlike the Stevens
family he died poor and his son, James jnr, did
little of note at Churchill Cottage. George Drewe
kept the Swan Inn and trained there up to the end
of the 1850s. His stable jockey, Joseph Lowe, who
succeeded him, later moved to Kennet House and
chaired the parish council. Three of the Dawson
brothers, Scots and members of the most important
of all training families, were briefly based here
though all were to move on to Newmarket; Joseph
left Ilsley in 1859, John moved there from Roden
House in 186o, and Mat, greatest of all trainers,
had stables at Ilsley and Yew Tree Cottage in the
early 1850s. After John Dawson's departure from
Roden House the American owner Richard TenBroeck
leased the house until 1866 for himself and his
Virginian trainer. Without reliable owners life
could be interesting; James Waugh's long and
distinguished training career included two years
at East Ilsley in the 1860s for Wybrow Robinson,
an Antipodean, who gambled away all of his
immense fortune.
Ascot Heath was used by several local stables.
The Master of Buckhounds improved the gallops in
the 1830s and Berkshire's first classic winner
was trained here in 1834 by William Day who
occupied Englemere Cottage but died
Mat
Dawson
Henry Scott and his son Sam moved here in 1837
while Samuel Death trained nearby for nearly
thirty years up until his retirement in 1859. Ben
Land who had formerly trained jumpers at East
Ilsley had two spells at Englemere Cottage from
1854 to 1863 but Ascot's significance as a
racecourse grew as its reputation as a training
centre faded.
Race meetings took place at Lambourn from the
eighteenth century but the first trainers only
arrived in the later 1840s. John Shaw Drinkald,
eccentric and disliked, installed his private
trainer in the High Street in 1847; the venture
never thrived and Mr Drinkald, a bad loser, ended
his days in an asylum. Edwin Parr, an owner-trainer,
who also trained for others, bought property here
and trained with moderate success until 1860.
Lord Craven himself showed what the amateur could
do. He bought a share in Wild Dayrell, the
property of the owner of Littlecote, and the colt
prepared by a Littlecote gardener/groom in the
grounds of Ashdown Park survived several
'nobbling' attempts to land the 1855 Derby.
Joseph Saxon, a self-made Lancashire man, bought
a hundred acres on the road to Upper Lambourn and
for nearly twenty years up to his death in 1870,
having run through all his money, supervised a
large and successful string. Luke Snowden, the
best of his several outstanding apprentices, is
one of the few racing men to be buried in the old
churchyard. The lychgate at the church was
erected in memory of Charles Jousiffe who was at
Seven Barrows from 1877 to 1891.
John Prince took Stork House in 1859 as a
public trainer - he had previously trained
privately at Ilsley and in Upper Lambourn. A
Derby winner did come from his stable, Kettledrum
in 1861, but it was prepared by a 'visiting'
trainer who afterwards moved
Picnic
at Ascot races
unsuccessfully to Seven Barrows. Fred Bates, a
Dawson son-in-law and Prince's successor, had
most of his success elsewhere. James Humphreys
who trained there from 1874 to 1896, specialised
in winning the great handicaps. Billy Higgs, born
in the Mile End Road and a lad in his stable
before the railway reached Lambourn, reminisced
later: 'Six o'clock in the morning until seven at
night....every horse which ran had to walk ten
miles to the station.' Higgs was twice champion
on the Flat (the stableman's dream came true),
but for most lads, often recruited for weight
reasons from urban slums, the dream did not,
although there were worse alternatives than a
racing stable. Fred Lynham ran a successful but
secretive stable at Saxon House - he was another
of Saxon's apprentices - and continued to own the
yard after moving to France. Edward Hobbs, there
from 1885 saddled good handicappers in the 1890s.
But Lambourn remained best known for a stable
which used its gallops but was in fact in
Wiltshire. The Rothschild horses were the first
trained at Russley Park in 1853 but the stable
was for nearly twenty years the base for most of
James Merry's horses. Merry, a Scots ironmaster
who attracted little affection, gambled heavily
but his horses ran on their merits with great
success up to 1875. His last trainer, Robert
Peck, continued Russley's success under his own
direction. Archie Merry, James's son, leased
Seven Barrows from the Craven estate after
Charles Jousiffe's death, putting the stable
under the direction of the Irish amateur rider,
Garry Moore. James Peace, the subject of an
unkind witticism from an ex-owner ('Ah Mr Peace -
the peace that passeth all understanding')
trained on a large and successful scale at
various stables in the area from 1883 until his
retirement nineteen years later; for him quantity
counted while James Chandler, at Lambourn House
from 1889, handled a higher class of horse. For
much of this period there were usually about four
important stables at any one time using the
Lambourn Downs.
At Letcombe Regis, Edwin Parr's older brother
Tom bought Benhams in 1851. His abilities as a
trainer of (mostly) his own horses were matched
only by his financial ineptitude. High in the
table of leading owners for much of the next
thirty years - he headed the list in 1856 - he
hid at intervals in his loft to avoid his
creditors. His most noted lad, Charles Morton,
trained in the village up to 1888 and returned
there later; his achievements in the next century
far eclipsed those of a master whom he held in
great regard. At Letcombe Regis too was Jack
Hornsby who moved there in the late 1880s and
trained the legendary handicapper Victor Wild,
perhaps the most popular racehorse of the time.
Stables started elsewhere notably at East
Hendred, Letcombe Bassett, Sparsholt and finally,
in 1897, Whatcombe, but for most of these, as
indeed the principal centres in Berkshire, the
great racing days lay in the twentieth century.
Recommended reading: for a general history
of racing in Berkshire see James Douglas-Home
'Horse racing in Berkshire' (1992); for brief
information on specific trainers see David Boyd,
A Biographical dictionary of racehorse trainers
in Berkshire 1850- 1939'.
