AND TIMES OF JOHN OSBORNE 119 



graphical features and in its antiquity as a racing centre. 

 Each course at each place is a galloping up and down one, 

 and the locales are reached by a steep ascent from the 

 town. The likeness does not end there, for from the 

 highest altitude of each the eye takes in a panorama of 

 scenery of hill and dale, of wood and water, of far- 

 stretching pasture and meadow, which, for beauty and 

 extent, is unrivalled in the United Kingdom. The view 

 from Richmond on a clear day is impressively grand, 

 the eye glancing over the mosaic of country from Rich- 

 mond High Moor, taking in on the sky line the towers 

 of York Minster some fifty miles distant. Change the 

 view, and the meandering Swale, winding its way like 

 a silver thread through dingle and dell, through 

 tumbling cascades, with the Hambleton Hills on the 

 one side and the not far distant Penhill and Middleham 

 on the other, form a sombre background to the 

 ravishing picture. 



Richmond Moor has been the scene of many 

 triumphs of the Osbornes. Who that has been at the 

 old-time meeting could forget the quaint old stand 

 and the square stone tower away from it at the far side 

 of the course that served as a judge's box ? " The stand," 

 says a writer in the early sixties, " would shock the 

 refined ideas of the Ascot stewards, and the Newmarket 

 authorities would have fainted to see that in the 

 weighing-room there was a kitchen range with oven and 

 boiler complete." The access to the judge's chamber, 

 in which Mr. Justice Johnson sat to hear summonses, 

 was by means of a window to which a small set of steps 

 was attached. " By a piece of glass let into a cupboard 

 the jockeys made their toilette, and one more elaborate 

 than that of young Job Marson," continues the writer, 

 " we never saw attempted by Charles Mathews on any 



