John Tolson & Wray Vamplew

International Centre for Sports History and Culture De Montfort University

I

Two decades ago Wray Vamplew argued in his pioneering work on the social and economic history of the sport in Britain that `it is no exaggeration to say that the railways revolutionised horse-racing'.1 Dennis Brailsford has also maintained that the effect of the railways on horse-racing were `positive, dramatic and long-lasting.'2 This paper, by use of quantitative and qualitative analysis of both nineteenth century racing literature and primary sources such as the Racing Calendar, suggests that these claims were too sweeping. As elsewhere in sports history, research is revealing that there was a substantial degree of continuity amidst the more eye-catching changes. To assess whether the railways were the driving force of a revolution, or merely the facilitators and accelerators of trends and activities already in place, the authors examined the extent to which railway development influenced spectator travel and attendance, prize money and sponsorship, horse transport, jockey travel and finally, racecourses and race meetings.

II

Doyen of railway historians, Jack Simmons, has claimed that the railways `contributed largely to the growth of spectator sports. First of all ... to race-meetings.'3 The Oxford Companion to Local and Family History also argues that `with the coming of the railways working-class enthusiasts were able to get to courses all over the country'.4Certainly before the development of professional football in the late nineteenth century horse-racing was the major spectator sport in Britain; but it had been so for at least a century before the railway came. Crowds of up to 80,000 were reported at Epsom for the Derby meeting in the 1820s5 and it was not until 1937 that 85,000 spectators arrived by rail alone.6 Attendances of over 200,000 were recorded in the early 1850s, a time when only one of three competing railway companies had a station within two miles of the course.7 Less prestigious events such as the first to use man-made jumps at Bedford in 1810 and the short-lived meetings at Lambton Park in County Durham in the early 1820s both reported attendances in the region of 40,000.8

Nevertheless railway companies quickly seized upon the revenue potential of transporting racegoers, the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, for one, operating excursions to Newton races in June 1831 less than a year after its opening.9 Within a few years of their arrival on the transport scene railways were offering racegoers special trains, cheap excursion fares (often available on normal service trains), special rolling stock for both human and equine passengers, and dedicated racecourse stations as well as additional facilities at normal stations.

The provision of special trains and facilities was not peculiar to race meetings, but was part of the increasing freedom and mobility fostered by the cheap fares enshrined in the Railway Act of 1844, the early Saturday finish for some industrial workers granted by the Factory Act of 1850, and above all the Great Exhibition of 1851 when reduced train fares and cheap admissions tempted over six million visitors to attend. Expectations were raised: for the public there was the promise of freedom and adventure; for the railways increased turnover and, hopefully, increased profits.

At both Ascot and Epsom there was fierce rivalry between railway companies. At the former the London & South Western and the Great Western Railways competed from an equal distance between 1838 and 1856 until the L&SWR gained an irreversible advantage with the opening of a branch to Ascot.10 An extension in the same year opened up the Ascot traffic to the South Eastern Railway,11 the last of the three contenders to reach Epsom racecourse with the completion of its branch to Tattenham Corner in 1901. Until that time the Epsom traffic had been contested for in a straight fight between the L&SWR and the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway, with the latter gaining a marked advantage in 1865 with the opening of its nine platform station at Epsom Downs to add to its earlier station close to the L&SWR in Epsom town.12

Conversely at Doncaster the railways demonstrated how one company - the Great Northern Railway- with only one modest main line station could co-ordinate the activities of up to eight companies so expertly that between 1848 and 1908 it handled an increase from about 8,000 racegoers to 190,000 in some 350 trains on St Leger Day alone.13 By suspending almost all freight traffic over its system and clearing up to seventy miles of sidings in the vicinity of Doncaster, the GNR was able to despatch a train every seventy-five seconds using just one regular passenger station and a couple of temporary locations.

Despite the stance taken at Doncaster, some thirty special stations were provided at or near racecourses by railway companies; for example at Nottingham, Kempton Park, Cheltenham and Newbury, while others provided additional platforms or facilities used only on race days - Esher, Aintree (Sefton Arms) and Westenhanger fall into this category. For most meetings, however, the railways contented themselves with offering special trains and cheap fares - usually a return journey at the normal single fare.14

The presence of the railway was not always welcomed by the racecourse owners or by the Jockey Club. In the 1860s the Epsom Grandstand Association vetoed the projected line of the LB&SCR which would have reached a point much nearer the grandstand than that ultimately built.15 At Newmarket the Jockey Club, despite its recognition of the advantage of railways for the transport of horses and the gentry, did not want its meetings flooded with the lower orders and so continued to have the start and finish of each race situated so as to cause maximum inconvenience to pedestrians even after excursion trains had been sanctioned.16 Indeed the Jockey Club's general lack of interest in the railways as an aid to passenger traffic can be seen from a detailed examination of all racecourse descriptions in the Racing Calendar, the official organ of the Club, which before 1870 revealed only five references to the existence or proximity of railway facilities; in chronological order these were Radcliffe, Wrexham, Hungerford, West Drayton and Hendon & Kingsbury. Thereafter there were more frequent references, but seemingly without enthusiasm, and certainly not accurate enough to date special facilities even when they were mentioned.

This was understandable as until the first major fully enclosed course in 1875 at Sandown the number of racegoers generally had no direct impact on the finances of meetings unless they came by carriage or on horseback, or patronised the grandstand or special enclosure. Their numbers may have influenced the rents charged for booths and refreshment tents, or swelled the coffers on the odd occasion when gatemoney was charged, but the main source of income - and hence prizemoney - was from race subscriptions and donations.

Preliminary findings indicate that, although the railways provided the means to increase the number of spectators at race meetings by widening the catchment area and providing speedy, convenient, and relatively cheap travel, they did not initiate mass attendances. Certainly for the first fifty years of their existence the railways themselves rather than the racecourses were the chief beneficiaries of spectator travel.

III

It has been argued by one of the authors on an earlier occasion that `the railway companies helped raise the level of prize money from £198,990 in 1843 to £315,272 in 1874. They did this indirectly by bringing in more spectators and directly by sponsoring races.'17 Neither of these stand up to scrutiny.

As noted above, until the advent of the enclosed course the number of spectators had no real impact on the amount of prize money to be offered. Even in the enclosed course era when gate money was charged, its value needs to be put into perspective. At Richmond in 1890 the potential loss of a £100 prize traditionally given by Lord Zetland would have required an additional 2,000 paying spectators to offset it and five years earlier when the entrance fee was only sixpence double this number would have been required; as the average attendance at this popular North Yorkshire meeting was between 4,000 and 6,000 such an increase would have been virtually impossible without changing the character of the meeting - railway or no railway.18 The major source of income for prizemoney well into the twentieth century continued to be subscriptions from owners themselves; in 1905, for example, two-thirds of all prizemoney came from that source.19

This suggests that sponsorship may not have been as important as previously argued. Over the years typical sponsors identified from the Racing Calendar were the nobility and gentry, local M.P.s, tradesmen, theatre owners, innkeeper, councils and local inhabitants. Even the Northumberland Cricket Club sponsored a race at Newcastle between 1842 and 1844.20 Railways too offered financial assistance and Brailsford has claimed that `Railway Stakes became a common feature of the racing programme.'21

The involvement of the railway companies in sponsorship has been taken here to mean the funding or partial funding of individual races, although at Brighton and Epsom - and perhaps elsewhere - railway companies made payments to the general race fund or responded to appeals for course improvements. On this basis an analysis of all races recorded in the Racing Calendar between 1830 and 1901 with either the word `Railway' in their title or reference to a donation by a specific railway company produces 522 instances of railway sponsorship at 74 different courses. The sums donated ranged from £5 to £300, the latter well above all but the most generous of individual sums of `added money' provided by other sponsors. Yet in aggregate this sponsorship from the railways was relatively insignificant. In 1843 the railways provided £110.50 of the £198,990 on offer - less than 0.06%; in 1874 £350 (0.11%) of the £315,272 came from the railway companies; and in 1901 a solitary donation of £200 (0.04%) from the Great Eastern Railway at Newmarket figures in the overall prizemoney of £493,890. The peak year for railway sponsorship, in terms of both value and the number of races funded, came in 1861 with £1142.50 donated to 22 races.22 A comparison with the situation in Ireland can be made thanks to the work of Fergus D'Arcy.23 This reveals that amounts donated by the Irish railways were proportionately larger than on the mainland - £633 (2.08%) of £30,502 prizemoney in 1876 and £903 (1.76%) of £51,281 in 1901 - but were still small.

Apart from the Great Eastern Railway, which supported a single race at Newmarket from 1854 (as the Eastern Counties Railway) until the 1923 Grouping when it became part of the LNER, by far the most consistent supporter of individual races was the London & South Western Railway, which provided sponsorship at no less than 17 courses - although not all at the same time. Hampton was so favoured for fifty years, the support ending only when the course was closed. Sponsorship at Salisbury lasted almost as long and was possibly ended only because in two of the final three years the race concerned failed to attract sufficient runners. Some major companies such as the London & North Western and Great Northern Railways are absent from the sponsorship list, the latter surprisingly so considering that it was at the heart of the St Leger race traffic arrangements.24

Present indications are that direct contributions to the prize fund by the railway companies were negligible. Even if all the marginal instances are included aggregate railway sponsorship does not exceed £1,500 even in the peak year.

IV

Before the advent of railways racehorses were normally walked between meetings by their grooms. Typical journeys were five to seven days between Newmarket and Epsom and up to three weeks between Goodwood and Doncaster or Liverpool. Railways gave horses the opportunity to travel on equal terms with their owners in speed and an increasing level of comfort. Although the impetus originally came from carriage horses transported on the same trains as their owners, or on closely following `luggage trains', the facility was soon used for racehorses and their journey times between meetings were reduced from days and weeks to hours.

To quantify the effect of the railways on the transit of racehorses (leaving aside considerations of speed and convenience) the activities of certain well-known owners were analysed at ten yearly intervals between 1829 and 1859. This showed a remarkable consistency in their behaviour both before and during the early railway age.

In 1829 the owners fell into two distinct camps: those who, like the Marquis of Exeter and Tavistock, raced only at a few prestigious meetings and some local courses; and those like Messrs Day and Beardsworth, who in their so-called `regional circuits', visited up to sixteen different courses, ranging in the first case from Holywell in North Wales to Warwick, Bath and Epsom.

Brailsford has claimed, that with the coming of the railways:

No longer did a long weekend have to be set aside to walk the horse from one course to another and no longer did a horse's season have to be planned with a careful eye on the map and the round of regional meetings...A horse could in a single summer race comfortably at York and Lincoln, at Brighton and Manchester, or wherever.25

The first part of his claim is an oversimplification, particularly where large stables were concerned. The `regional circuits' were quite large, as can be instanced by the celebrated mare Catherina, which in 1839 raced 25 times with direct journeys between Worcester, Clitheroe and Shrewsbury, none of which could have been accomplished in a long weekend. Nor was this necessary, as the spacing of the meetings allowed time for the travel to take place. Although there were few railways to help in their travels, in that same year both the Earl of Eglinton and Mr J. O. Fairlie raced horses all over England as well as in Scotland, while Isaac Day still roamed the southern and western counties but also extended his activities to Newmarket. In contrast to the Earl of Eglinton's horses which visited no less than 22 courses, those of the two Marquesses still remained firmly in their previous orbits, again with relatively little movement.

At first sight the pattern in 1849 seems much the same. Isaac Day continued as before, but had added more prestigious meetings to his calendar. On the other hand the Duke of Bedford (as the Marquis of Tavistock had become) was even more static than before, running his 20 horses 88 times at Newmarket out of the total 98 races in which they were entered. Although the Earl of Eglinton still raced his horses all over England and Scotland his activities were much reduced. However some owners were taking advantage of the railways to move their horses swiftly between meetings. They were typified by Thomas Dawson who raced his 16 horses at no less than 28 courses, and above all by the Wantage tea dealer and trainer, Thomas Parr, who throughout the 1850s made sure that his horses raced as often as they could, be it a £50 plate or the St. Leger. In 1857 one of them, Fisherman, raced on successive days at York, Abingdon, and then Lichfield, Derby and Weymouth.

At first glance it would appear that the railways may have encouraged a significant increase in the number of horses racing 15 times or more in a season from 0.65 % of those racing at least once in 1829 to 6.51% forty years later. However, by 1899 the proportion had fallen to 0.77%, scarcely above the earlier figure. A possible reason for this may have been a reaction to what many turf authorities thought was the excessive racing of two-year-olds who, with their three-year-old counterparts, had been responsible for over 70% of the 1869 percentage.26 Perhaps more owners too were beginning to prefer a guaranteed stud income rather than continue to race their animals.27

Although such a view would have been anathema to the likes of Thomas Parr, there had been an acceptance in some quarters - expressed most forcefully by the Duke of Beaufort28- that the too frequent transit of horses by rail caused stress to the animals. Even George Alexander Baird, the hard-riding Mr Abington, who often drove himself unmercifully as a gentleman rider, raced few of his horses more than ten times a season in the 1880s. Moreover, guides to the breeding and training of racehorses written in the early twentieth century (and presumably distilling the wisdom of the late nineteenth) recommended up to two weeks for a horse to recover from a hard race.29 Detailed analysis of the travels of those horses which raced in excess of 25 times a year in the later nineteenth century demonstrates that the indiscriminate transit of horses all over the country by maverick owners had all but disappeared, though the regional circuits, albeit now larger geographically, still remained. Moreover, the prerogative exercised by owners of famous winners such as Cyprian30 in the 1830s and Isinglass31 in the 1890s to race their horses only a few times for big prizes also still remained. Overall there were changes in the behaviour of owners but these can be seen to be marginal rather than significant. The consistency in their conduct suggests that the railways facilitated what would have happened anyway rather than brought about any new pattern of behaviour.

V

Top jockeys were the undisputed winners in the racing game during the nineteenth century. In less than a hundred years they progressed from mere `horse grooms', through a period of equality - at least in financial terms - with many in the professions, to become the first sporting `superstars'. But to reach the top, and to stay there, involved a heavy workload. By the end of the century, with the increasing opportunities to ride both in Britain and on the Continent, the would-be champion jockey often needed 600 to 800 mounts in a season as against 250 to 350 in the 1840s and 1850s.

Some quite spectacular journeys were made by jockeys in the pre-railway days, as in 1832 when Calloway made a 320 mile return trip to Shrewsbury between two days' racing at Doncaster.32 Both Calloway and Tommy Lye are reported to have travelled over 6,000 miles in a season, while Frank Buckle, who ended his long career in the 1830s, often used to commute between his home near Peterborough and Newmarket, a round trip of over 90 miles a day.33

Detailed analyses of the journeys made by jockeys - at least so far as racemeetings are concerned- is only really feasible from the 1840s when a full listing of the participants in a race are given in the Racing Calendar which enables the movements of jockeys to be traced to and from their training base during the racing season. A review of the champion jockey's travels at ten year intervals between 1849 and 1899 shows a steady progression from Nat Flatman racing on 75 days of his season (35% of the days on which racing occurred ) for his 94 winners to Sammy Loates with 160 winners from 179 days racing (71% of his season).34 Estimated travelling of the two champions respectively was 4,270 miles and 10,770 miles. This tidy scenario, however, was disrupted when the frequency of the analysis was increased to five yearly intervals. John Wells, champion in 1854 with only 82 wins, demonstrated that activity did not always equate with success as he travelled an estimated 9,775 miles, more than twice that of Flatman and raced on 121 days, 61% more than the 1849 champion. No other jockey travelled more miles in a season till Tommy Loates in 1889, when his journeys included a 2,000 miles, 17 day marathon.35 Wells's visits to 39 courses in 1859, almost exactly twice as many as Flatman, were equalled by Jem Grimshaw ten years later but surpassed by no other jockey surveyed.

Activity charts of jockey travels clearly show the growth of weekend opportunities for mounts, firstly with Sunday racing on the Continent and then on Saturdays in Britain, beginning mainly with the London metropolitan courses in the late 1860s and then the enclosed courses which supplanted them a decade further on. In 1874 Fred Archer raced on only six Saturdays, but 25 years later Sammy Loates was in action on no less than 31 occasions, leaving himself only five free Saturdays during the season.

The railways undoubtedly gave top jockeys the potential to increase their earnings at the expense of increased travel and pressure. However, they still had to secure rides and perform effectively in the saddle. That Archer averaged 18 rides a meeting in 1884 when he rode a record 241 winners may have been mainly attributable to him exploiting the services of the railway companies. That he had a riding success rate of 41.6% is down to his skill. Both success rates and the number of rides at any given meeting had a profound effect on the distance a jockey had to travel. When Archer had his record-breaking season he rode almost three times as many winners as Wells thirty years earlier and was able to achieve the feat with some 500 miles less travel. He also managed an average of 18 rides at a meeting - twice as many as Wells - hence the travel treadmill on which the latter found himself in the relatively early days of the rail network.

VI

In 1830 the Racing Calendar listed 125 courses at which flat racing took place. By 1914 there were only 48 such courses, although the number of meetings held was almost identical. This comparison, however, does not reveal that a further 268 locations had been listed in the intervening years and thus that 345 meetings, not counting the ones transferred to a new site, must have vanished from the official flat-racing scene for some reason. Further research has that those racecourses which had a relatively settled existence before 1830 were more longlived than the great majority of those opened after 1830 or which had only a sporadic existence prior to that date. No less than 196 (71%) of the latter closed before they had held meetings in at least ten separate years but the mortality of the older courses was only 22 (18%). Similarly only 6% of the newer courses remained open in 1914 whereas over four times as many of the older courses (or their immediate successors) survived at that date. There had been a surge of new racemeetings in the late 1830s and early 1840s and another some thirty years later. 107 courses staged their first - and often their last - meeting between 1835 and 1844 with a further 61 doing likewise in the period 1865-74. Of the first batch only Ripon (opened 1838) survived until 1914, although Scarborough and Paisley had a good run. Of the next cohort three survived, Windsor, Redcar and Alexandra Park, and there were no `good triers'. Clearly the racecourse `manias' left a smaller legacy than the railway ones. On a regional basis the clear losers were Wales and the South West, with the latter declining from 23 courses in 1829 to only two in 1909. All the Welsh flat-racing courses closed before 1879, although new National Hunt courses such as Bangor on Dee (opened 1859) flourished. Despite a slight reduction in the number of courses, both the North East and Scotland finished the period with more meetings. The Midlands and the North West still looked strong, because most of the surviving courses hosted several meetings a year, while in East Anglia both Newmarket and Yarmouth held their own. The greatest gain in meetings occurred in London and the South East with a threefold increase from 18 in 1829 to 54 in 1909, despite a net reduction of two in the number of courses situated there.

To what extent did the railways contribute to this situation? It has been widely stated - amongst others by Vamplew and Brailsford36 - that the railways were responsible for the closure of many country and less important town courses, but there is little direct evidence to support this. Of the 218 courses which held meetings in less than ten separate years in the period under review, about 25% of them had already closed by 1840, before the railways could have exerted any significant influence on their fate. On the other hand some courses which had only a brief flirtation with flatracing, like Hereford and Rothbury, continued as very successful National Hunt fixtures and certainly in the latter case the railway played an important role in its long life.37 Ongoing research suggests that it is likely that the majority of the remaining shortlived meetings would have closed with or without the railway.

Of the 127 courses which had a life of at least ten years in the period reviewed, about half closed between 1865 and 1880, years marked by a tightening of Jockey Club rules on minimum prize money and Parliamentary legislation to curb the activities of the notorious London suburban courses.38 The peak year for `last appearances' was 1876 after which no less than 18 long-lived courses disappeared from the Racing Calendar. This was the year when the Jockey Club set the minimum prize money at authorised meetings at £100 (£150 for races of a mile or more), with a minimum total prize money of £300 for each day's racing.

Further research has shown that about 25 of the 127 courses, among them Cheltenham, Chelmsford and Perth, moved totally into National Hunt racing. Although there had been a growing interest in racing `over the sticks', some courses were undoubtedly stimulated in this direction by the Jockey Club rule; indeed the generally much lower level of prize money offered at these meetings supports this view. The closure of another ten courses was effected by the same rule coupled with the requirement to obtain a licence from the relevant local London magistrates: Streatham, West Drayton, and Kingsbury certainly went this way. Northampton and Paisley were closed on safety grounds early in this century; others such as Stamford and Bedford suffered from a withdrawal of local aristocratic patronage; whilst Malton, Durham and Reading found new owners of leases unwilling to allow racing to continue. Only one clear instance of the railway being the immediate cause of closure has been found: at Banbury where the GWR actually cut across the course thus rendering racing impossible at that site.

The key elements in the success of any racecourse (at least up to 1875) were the support of the local gentry and tradespeople and the subscriptions of the racehorse owners. Despite Brailsford's argument about the negative effect of not having a railway close by, some successful meetings continued in such circumstances, and new meetings such as Ripon (and Bangor on Dee for National Hunt racing) started and flourished even when no railway served their town.39 Moreover, while the statements of Vamplew on the rougher spectators brought to the races by the railways, and those of Brailsford on the decline of the social life surrounding meetings, have some truth, contemporary accounts from such diverse places as Morpeth and Oxford show that these elements were there well before the railway age.40

VII

The research on which this paper is based is still in its early stages but is advanced enough to suggest that, while railways undoubtedly had an influence on the development of flat racing in mainland Britain during the nineteenth century, many trends and tendencies were already existent in pre-railway days. The railways certainly facilitated and may have accentuated some of the events in progress, but they did not revolutionise the sport.

References

Batchelor, Denzil, The Turf of Old (1951)

Beaufort, Duke of & Morris, M., Hunting (1891)

Bird, T.H., Admiral Rous and the English Turf (1939)

Brailsford, Dennis, British Sport: A Social History (1992)

Brooke, G., Horsemanship (1934)

Dalzell, Lord Hamilton of, The financial aspects of racing, Badminton Magazine, 23 (1906), pp. 251-257

D'Arcy, Feargus A., Horses, Lords and Racing Men (1991)

Fairfax-Blakeborough, Northern Turf History (1 - 1948; 2 - 1949)

Hey, David, the Oxford Companion to Local and Family History (1996)

Kirkby, J.R.W., The Banstead and Epsom Downs Railway (1983)

Mortimer, Roger, The Jockey Club (1958)

Mortimer, Roger, Hedges and Hurdles (1987)

Scowcroft, P.L., Railways and the St. Leger, Railway and Canal Society Historical Journal, XXVII No. 9 (1983), pp. 266-276.

Simmons, Jack, The Victorian Railway (1991)

Thomas , R.H.G., The Liverpool and Manchester Railway (1980)

Vamplew, Wray, The Turf (1976)

Vamplew, Wray, Pay Up and Play the Game (1988)

Whyte, J.C., History of the British Turf (1840)

Wynn Jones, Michael, The Derby (1979)

Jackson's Oxford Journal

Newcastle Journal

Racing Calendar

Railway Magazine

Southern Railway Magazine

Notes

1 Vamplew, 1976, p.33.

2 Brailsford, 1992, p.85.

3 Simmons, 1991, p.301.

4 Hey, 1996, p.222.

5 Wynn Jones, 1979, pp.47-48, quoting Bell's Life in London on the 1823 race.

6 Southern Railway Magazine (July, 1937), p.245.

7 Wynn Jones, 1979, p.75. He also states ` ...the railways did not noticeably affect the noisy, dusty, beer-swilling pilgrimage by road. Trains could still only accommodate a fraction of the crowd, and offered only timesaving in place of bonhomie'.

8 Munting, 1987, p.4; Fairfax-Blakeborough, 1949, pp.150-153.

9 Thomas, 1980, p.198.

10 The London & Southampton Railway (renamed the London & South Western Railway in 1839) opened its line from Nine Elms to Woking Common on 21 May 1838, while the Great Western Railway completed the first section of its main line to Bristol as far as Taplow (the station there was originally known as Maidenhead) on 4 June of the same year, This gave both companies a railhead about eight miles from Ascot, a slight reduction in the distance being achieved when they each opened a branch to Windsor in 1849. The L&SWR opened its line from Staines to Ascot on 4 June 1856, and thereafter the GWR had to compete by using road transport for its passengers to complete their journey to the course except for any trains routed over the South Eastern Railway at Reading.

11 The South Eastern Railway had opened its isolated line from Reading to Farnborough on 4 July 1849, extending through to Ash, near Aldershot, on 20 August of the same year. The LSWR extended its line from Ascot to a junction with the SER at Wokingham on 9 July 1856, while the latter finally made connection with the GWR at Reading on 1 December 1858.

12 The L&S line to Woking (see note 10) provided a railhead for Epsom from Surbiton (then known as Kingston). The fiasco of the first Derby specials from the Nine Elms terminus is described graphically in The Times of 31 May 1838. The London & Brighton Railway (London, Brighton & South Coast from 1846) opened the first section of its line as far as Haywards Heath on 12 May 1841, but the first time its station at Stoats Nest, south of Purley, could be used for Derby traffic was in 1842. Both companies now had stations between five and seven miles from Epsom racecourse, until the LB&SCR opened a branch from West Croydon into the town of Epsom on 10 May 1847. This gave that company a decided advantage until the L&SWR reached Epsom from the west in February 1859 and from the London direction on 4 April in the same year. Although the LB&SCR linked itself to the new lines on 8 August 1859, and in fact operated the Epsom-Leatherhead line jointly with the L&SWR, the arrival of the latter at Epsom caused the LB&SC profits to dip alarmingly. So to combat this problem the latter opened a short double track branch to a nine platform terminus at Epsom Downs on 22 May 1865. Thirty six years later the SER completed its branch to Tattenham Corner and opened a six platform station on 4 June 1901. Almost all the lines mentioned above were opened at a time to gain maximum benefit from the year's Derby week traffic. The SER actually opened its line on Derby Day itself.

13 The opening of the GNR line to a temporary station in Doncaster took place in time for the 1848 St Leger. For a full treatment of the development of the St Leger traffic see Scowcroft, 1983, pp.266-276.

14 Extended validity was also often granted and in allowing the racegoer to stay for the whole meeting the railways were able to give back some measure of the local shop and inn trade which their speed had taken away.

15 Kirkby, 1983, p.5.

16 A contemporary description of the difficulties encountered by a pedestrian wishing to see every race at Newmarket in the 1860s is quoted at length in Mortimer, 1958, chapter 12.

17 Vamplew, 1976, p.32.

18 Fairfax-Blakeborough, 1948, pp.330ff.

19 Dalzell, p.252.

20 Racing Calendar, 21 June 1842, 27 June 1843 and 25 June 1844.

21 Brailsford, 1992, p. 85.

22 Unfortunately no statistics for aggregate prize money can be found for which this can be expressed as a percentage.

23 D'Arcy, 1991, p.147.

24 Yet the company did donate a silver cup worth 50 guineas to the first Doncaster air show. Railway Magazine, November 1909, 435.

25 Brailsford, 1992, pp.85-87.

26 Bird, 1939, chapter 20.

27 For a discussion of the motivations of owners see Vamplew, 1988, pp.102-110.

28 `The strongest constitution and most even temper ever enjoyed by a member of the equine race will not long stand the wear and tear of those frequent rattlings over the rails, and all their inevitable discomforts and mischances.' Beaufort & Morris, 1891, p.282.

29 Brooke, 1934, p.234.

30 John Scott's three-year-old filly raced at Malton on 14 April 1836, then walked to Epsom and won the Oaks on 20 May. She then walked some 300 miles north to Newcastle to win the Northumberland Plate on 22 June. The Racing Calendar records only two other occasions on which she raced, coming third at both Northallerton in October 1835 and at York in May 1837.

31 Isinglass won the Derby, St Leger and Two Thousand Guineas and was beaten in only one of the twelve races in his four year career, during which he won £57,455, a record which survived till Tulyar in 1952.

32 Whyte, 1840, pp.596-7.

33 Batchelor, 1951, p.81.

34 The official title of `champion jockey' was designated only from 1846.

35 Loates' schedule from 2-18 April 1889 was Northampton (2 days), Alexandra Palace (1), Leicester (2), Paris (1), free day, Newmarket (3), Derby (2), Paris (1), Nottingham (2), and Croydon (2). He rode 33 times for 7 winners.

36 Vamplew,1976, pp.36-7; Brailsford,1992, p.85. Brailsford is incorrect in stating that the LSWR reached Salisbury in 1840. The line from Bishopstoke to Salisbury was not opened for freight until 27 February 1847 and to passengers two days later. The last meeting at Blandford took place on 20 August 1844. well before the railway could have had an influence.

37 Rothbury races, although only recorded in the Racing Calendar from 869-71 were an important local event. When the railway reached Morpeth in 1847 a coach service was run from the railhead to the meeting. The railway reached Rothbury itself in November 1870 ( just in time for the end of flat-racing there!) and special trains were provided. In 1899 the excursion facilities were improved to gain Board of Trade approval, although they had actually been used for many years. When passenger train services were discontinued from September 1952 race specials continued for a further five years. The last meeting at Rothbury was 10 April 1965.

38 Vamplew, 1976, p.99.

39 Race meetings are recorded in the Racing Calendar for Ripon in 1838 which had no railway till 1848,while the National Hunt course at Bangor on Dee had successful meetings from 1859 but no railway till 1895.

40 Vamplew, 1976, p.36 but for earlier problems at Oxford, see Jackson's Oxford Journal, 8 August 1828 and at Morpeth see Newcastle Journal, 7 October 1775. Brailsford, 1992, p.85 but for earlier signs of decline at Oxford see Jackson's Oxford Journal, 7 August 1819 and for Morpeth The New Sporting Magazine (1831) cited in Fairfax-Blakeborough, 1949, p.174.