38 THE ENGLISH TURF 



miles in length and various trial grounds, while certain 

 spaces are set aside for walking exercise. Resuming the 

 road, after travelling a mile and a quarter, measured from 

 the " Ditch," we reach the " top of the town," where the 

 town converges on the heath. To the left is the old- 

 fashioned " Portland " or " Duke's Stand," formerly the 

 finishing -point of the Cambridgeshire, but now rarely 

 used, except occasionally at the end of a day on " the 

 Flat." The Craven Stakes, the Criterion, the Criterion 

 Nursery, and the Old Cambridgeshire still finish here, but 

 the Cambridgeshire itself was moved down below a dozen 

 years ago or more, and has since been run so as to finish 

 at the Rowley Mile Stands. 



Continuing our journey through the town we pass the 

 castellated mansion built by a well-known jockey, but now 

 the property of Sir James Miller. Then comes a training 

 stable, succeeded by two or three brand-new villas, erected 

 by prosperous tradesmen of the town, and let for enormous 

 prices in the race week. Next comes a public-house, with 

 a bar open to the street. More private houses follow, and 

 there is a steep descent to the High Street, in which are the 

 Jockey Club Rooms, on the right, going eastward, and about 

 the centre of the town. 



It was down this hill, starting on the Cambridge Road, 

 along which we have just come, that Bill Lang, the pedes- 

 trian, once ran a mile in 4 min. 2 sec. I once beat that 

 record myself — in a runaway brougham, sharing the honour 

 with the late Mr. J. Comyns Cole, of ever-cherished memory, 

 and Mr. E. T. Sachs, his present successor on the Field. 

 Newmarket was once a great place for pedestrian feats, 

 and it was on this very road that Captain Barclay, in 

 1809, performed his feat of walking a thousand miles in a 

 thousand hours, the finish of which was witnessed by ten 

 thousand persons. 



The Jockey Club Rooms are employed as a place of 

 temporary residence by a few members, the Prince of Wales 

 invariably staying there. Adjoining are the offices of the 

 Keeper of the Match Book, an honoured and venerable title 

 that elsewhere has been modernised into Clerk of the 



