CHAPTER II 

 NEWMARKET 



Former meetings now defunct — Changes caused by railway system — Cathedral 

 town fixtures — Number of horses in training^Comparison with former 

 years — Newmarket — Description thereof — Exorbitant charges — " Hang the 

 good gallop" — G.E. Railway specials — Advice to visitors — Cost of potatoes 

 and walking-stick — Countryman visiting London — Londoner visiting Don- 

 caster — Discomforts of country meetings — A hotel experience — Generosity of 

 bookmakers— Newmarket training grounds before breakfast — Road from 

 London to Newmarket — Six Mile Bottom — The " Ditch " — View obtainable 

 there from the racecourse — The stands — The town — Runaway brougham — 

 The "Severals" — Bury Hills — Limekilns — Watching the morning work — 

 "Courses for horses" — Number of meetings held — Craven Meeting — Good 

 and bad years of certain stables — The travelling tout who wished to be 

 cremated — First Spring Meeting — Second Spring Meeting — Newmarket 

 Stakes — First July Meeting— Princess of Wales' Stakes — Second July — First 

 October— Two best meetings of the year— Second October Meeting — The 

 chief prizes — Houghton Meeting — Description of courses — Beacon Course 

 dissected — Turn of the Lands — A.F. — Rowley Mile — Big days — The July 

 Course — Suitable for long-distance races — Newmarket programmes analysed 

 — Five-furlong racing — Disadvantages of Stewards of the Jockey Club — 

 Setting their house in order. 



SUCH changes as have occurred in the general system 

 of racing have been very gradual, though during the 

 last twenty years the sport has become much centralised, 

 and now, thanks to the many enclosures, it is almost possible 

 for a Londoner to go racing every week of the year without 

 sleeping out of town. 



In its infancy the sport was much more scattered about 

 the country, and, curiously enough, there was nothing like 

 so much of it in the neighbourhood of London as there was 

 in Yorkshire or the Midlands. Racing in its early days 

 seems to have been most popular in horse-breeding dis- 

 tricts, as was natural enough. Thus, in the first quarter of 



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