by David Owen
The choice of the property development company which would buy the 270-acre Aintree site for £900,000 once planning permission had been obtained was also interesting. Capital and Counties Property Company Limited was headed by Leslie Marler, a man well known in racing, as well as property, circles, who for a time owned O’Malley Point, the horse which finished third in the 1961 Grand National. The 1960 Hennessy Gold Cup, another of jump-racing’s biggest prizes, adorned his family’s dining-room table. He would go on to build a stud near his Buckinghamshire home.
Marler, who had been a classical scholar at St Paul’s School, seems in some respects to have been cut from a similar cloth to Mrs Topham and the two are said to have hit it off. For one thing, he was just as inclined to grasp the bull by the horns as she was. In the First World War, he joined the mounted artillery at the ripe old age of 16 and ended up fighting with the White Russians. At one point in the Aintree talks, meanwhile, he is said to have been flying back from the Isle of Wight with Mrs Topham in a private aircraft when he took over the controls for a short period, in spite of having never piloted before. ‘It’s quite easy,’ he remarked subsequently. ‘It’s just like riding a horse.’
Following announcement of the deal, he too sought to emphasise that the Grand National would go on. ‘It’s not a question of destroying the Grand National,’ he said. ‘You cannot destroy a great thing like the Grand National. I’m sure it will go on, but homes come first … Once we start, there will be houses in six months.’ A 1:2,500 scale, three-dimensional model, now in the possession of Aintree, gives a striking impression of what the Aintree Paddocks development, providing housing for 15,000 people and other amenities, would have looked like. A chain of geometrical white shapes, like a row of teeth, stretches the better part of a mile from the site of the old grandstands to Becher’s Brook, the course’s most famous fence. Look closely and you see a scattering of hexagonal towers, of varying heights. Somewhere near the location of fence number 12 is a cog-shaped school.
Marler sailed off with members of his family within hours of the announcement on a 22-day cruise along the Norwegian coast aboard the Royal Mail liner Andes. His daughter remembers the crew throwing oranges to children in small rowing boats who had never seen them before. ‘They were munching them skin and all,’ she says.
Immediate reaction to the deal was by no means universally negative. A chronic land shortage and the need to replace tens of thousands of slum dwellings meant that housing was always high on the political agenda in Liverpool. Even those who valued the National often felt that new homes had to take precedence. ‘Let’s have the houses not the horses,’ said Norman Pannell, a Conservative MP with an ear for a soundbite. ‘I wish they could still jump and race round the houses,’ said Labour MP Sir Arthur Irvine less succinctly. ‘But the housing situation in Liverpool is so serious and the need for housing so intense that one welcomes news that land on a large scale is becoming available for a major social purpose.’
Liverpool was not the only city where land was in high demand, clouding the future of other urban racecourses. Manchester racecourse had been closed in November 1963 and Birmingham would follow, making room for accommodation for 7,500 people, in June 1965. Just a week after the Aintree announcement, Home Secretary Henry Brooke told MPs that Bogside racecourse at Irvine in Scotland was one of four to have been informed by turf authorities that they would be allocated no fixtures after the following year. This forced the removal, from 1966, of the Scottish Grand National to Ayr.
The stock market welcomed Capital and Counties’ prospective Aintree takeover, with the shares climbing 4½d on the day, adding over £740,000 to the company’s market value. By the time of an emergency Tophams board meeting on 15 July 1964, Mrs Topham had received many letters ‘and only a few begging and abusive ones.’ Even the Aintree staff were said to have taken the news in an understanding way. By mid-October, however, three key members of staff had handed in their notice and left the company.
The most important reaction to Mrs Topham’s announcement, though, was negative. It came from the seventh Earl of Sefton, whose family had owned Aintree for 750 years until he sold it to Tophams in 1949 for £275,000, under a mortgage paid off in March 1963. Lord Sefton said he hated the prospect of no racing at Aintree and thought it an ‘appalling loss’ to Liverpool. He then promptly went to the High Court and obtained a temporary order restraining Tophams from selling the land for any purpose other than horse racing and agriculture.
The court hearing proper, before Mr Justice Stamp, began on 2 October, in the midst of a general election campaign that was to see Labour returned to power after 13 years in opposition, but with a majority of only four. The legal battle would not be resolved until the eve of the next general election, at which pipe-smoking Prime Minister Harold Wilson cemented his hold on 10 Downing Street, in March 1966. Throughout this period – and, as it turned out, for several years thereafter – the future of the Grand National was in doubt.
It was – and is – tempting to see this battle for Aintree through the prism of class conflict: hereditary peer and former Lord-in-Waiting to Edward VIII challenges self-made entrepreneur over a modest but irreplaceable piece of the national heritage. And the century-old National Hunt Committee and 200-year old Jockey Club – and hence the aristocrats and military types who populated them – were indeed about to see their power over the sport diluted.
The main threat to their pre-eminence, however, was not Mrs Topham – who, as head of a family which had managed Liverpool racecourse for more than a century was, in her way, as much of a dynast as some of them. She was in any case seeking a golden goodbye from the sport rather than more control. No, the emerging power in racing’s land was the Levy Board and the trump-card in its possession was oodles of cold, hard cash, collected from punters who, since 1961, had been pouring into betting-shops as well as through turnstiles. According to Martin Crawshay, who spent 28 years with the body until 1991, the Levy Board ‘could, if it wished, control the sport absolutely’. It was not until the Labour appointee George Wigg replaced Lord Harding as chairman in 1967 that this became most strikingly apparent. In the body’s early years, in Crawshay’s words, the ‘grandees of the Jockey Club … while much welcoming the establishment of the Levy were reluctant to see the power of expenditure … in hands other than their own.’
The case hinged on interpretation of a covenant in the 1949 agreement under which Lord Sefton had sold Aintree to Tophams. Lord Sefton argued that the Capital and Counties deal was in breach of this since it restricted use of the land, in his lifetime, to horse racing or agriculture.
In his evidence, the peer talked about a meeting in December 1963, when Mrs Topham ‘with tears in her eyes’ told him that expenditure was such that she could not carry on and asked to be released from the covenant. She had breathed ‘not a word’ about negotiations with Capital and Counties.
He suggested that £2 million might be needed to bring course facilities up to scratch, an assessment with which Mrs Topham later concurred. ‘The stands are getting older and older and it is looking very disreputable, despite all the money we have spent,’ she told the court.
On 30 October, Mr Justice Stamp ruled in favour of Lord Sefton. Tophams’ arrangement with Capital and Counties was concluded, he said, ‘without regard to Tophams’ legal or moral obligations to Lord Sefton. Tardily, Mrs Topham asserted to Lord Sefton that the covenants were no longer reasonable, but did not tell him that her company had concluded an agreement for sale.’ Tophams, he went on, had ‘failed to satisfy me that racing cannot profitably be carried on at Aintree.’
Round one, then, to Lord Sefton, but Mrs Topham and her old flying partner Leslie Marler retained a right of appeal. Would they choose to exercise it? Reporters inquiring on the day of the judgement were told the Tophams chairman was not available to comment. A three-hour board meeting at Paddock Lodge on 28 November left the question unresolved, with pressing matters including the death of a staff member c
alled W. Taylor, crushed against a wall by a lorry when loading grain. Attitudes in the racing industry seemed to be hardening, however, with Major W. D. Gibson, acting senior steward of the National Hunt Committee, stating that no ‘substitute Grand National’ would be allowed.
It was not until 9 January 1965 – at a meeting at which they also received the unwelcome news that the AA was proposing to charge 13 guineas for the erection of 84 route-signs for Aintree’s spring meeting – that Mrs Topham and her fellow directors agreed ‘unanimously’ to appeal.
By this time, owners had flocked to enter eligible horses in the race, set for 27 March, which many expected would indeed be the last Grand National at Aintree and conceivably the last anywhere. A bumper 112 entries had been received by the deadline on 5 January. ‘Owners were buying horses just to run in the last National,’ says John Leech, a jockey who rode in the race.
At their meeting, the Tophams directors decided against incorporating the phrase ‘last chance’ into that year’s Grand National posters. Better, they thought, that the posters be ‘fly-stuck’ nearer the time.
See Notes on Chapter 6
Chapter 7
The Road to Doncaster
The uncertainty over the Grand National was also colouring Foinavon’s future. Part of the importance of that Baldoyle race which he had crashed out of so disappointingly was that it offered the winner a ticket to the great Aintree spectacular. On the morning of the race, indeed, Foinavon was described in the press as ‘Tom Dreaper’s Grand National hope’.
Under normal circumstances, there would have been other opportunities for the horse to redeem himself. The closing date for the 1965 Grand National, however, fell just three days after the Baldoyle meeting on 5 January. So he had blown his chance of lining up that year in the world’s most famous steeplechase. And with Mrs Topham still intent on selling Aintree for housing, that opportunity might never come again. That fall at Baldoyle, in other words, had cost the horse his one and only chance of running in a Liverpool Grand National – or so it would have seemed at the time.
Given this and the questionable attitude that Foinavon’s subsequent grass-cropping antics had made manifest, it would have been surprising if Tom Dreaper – though still sick with an infection that had kept him away from Arkle’s victory in the 1964 Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury in December – had not started reviewing Foinavon’s future at Greenogue. This is even though the great trainer had ‘always said’, according to jockey Peter McLoughlin, that the horse ‘could win an English Grand National’, one of the few races to elude him throughout his glittering career.
For the time being, though, there was still a heavy Irish racing schedule to negotiate. On 9 January, McLoughlin had a good crack at maintaining his 100 per cent winning record on the horse in another three-mile chase at Naas. Running on heavy ground, at a meeting where the Dreaper team notched two other winners, Foinavon fell for the second week in a row. The Irish Field, though, put a favourable gloss on events, noting, ‘There might have been a third success for our top National Hunt trainer if Foinavon had not tumbled at the last in the Boyne Handicap Chase when he was coming storming along to challenge the ultimate winner Cavendish.’ McLoughlin concurs with this account. ‘If he had landed running, I think he would have won,’ he says.
A week later, on the day that Pat Taaffe collected his fifth consecutive Irish jockeys’ title, the pair were in action again, this time at Leopard-stown. For the third time in four races, Foinavon started as favourite (at 5/2 on this occasion). However, once again, he disappointed, with the Irish Field recording that he was ‘well beaten when he was brought down at the last fence.’ McLoughlin remembers seeing a loose horse on the ground, presumably Snow Trix, the only faller. ‘I decided I wanted him to go left; he decided right,’ he says succinctly. ‘I would have said “unseated rider”.’
Expectations were commensurately lower three weeks later when, after a period of snow and ice in Ireland, Foinavon next ventured on to a racecourse. The Foxrock Cup on 6 February would be his sixth race at Leopardstown and he had yet to finish in the first three. He was up against Cavendish, the victor when he fell at Naas in January. What is more, he would be partnered by another new jockey, Sean Barker, who had yet to win a steeplechase. The portents, then, did not look good. This, though, was another of those races that would have a pivotal influence on Foinavon’s eccentric path through life.
Jockey Barker, who would go on to finish second in the 1970 Grand National and third in 1972, received much of the credit as Foinavon, an 8/1 shot, got up to overhaul Quintin Bay in the last few strides of the course’s stiff uphill finishing stretch to win by a neck. This after hot favourite Cavendish had fallen at the second fence. ‘The winner … was magnificently ridden by 29-year-old Sean Barker,’ wrote ‘Burnaby’ in the Irish Field. ‘He displayed tremendous dash and strength all the way through the race. In spite of the fact that Foinavon was slightly outjumped by Quintin Bay at many of the fences, Barker gave his mount plenty of encouragement and set his mount at his fences with the utmost bravery.’ The third horse, Zonda, trailed in 15 lengths behind.
The win completed a memorable week for stable lad Vincent Slevin, whose other two horses, Fort Leney and Dicky May, had both won at Gowran Park two days’ before. ‘When he paid me, my boss said, “My gosh, you had a bloody good week”,’ Slevin still remembered 46 years later. More significantly as it turned out, the victory did qualify Foin-avon to run in a future Grand National. The credential would only count for anything, however, if the race continued beyond 1965 – and at that stage, 49 days before that year’s field was due to gather in Liverpool, it still looked like it might not.
Exactly a month later – and a week after Foinavon had reverted to type by falling in another Leopardstown chase, albeit under a lot more weight than in his winning run – Mrs Topham gave a firm indication that she was considering bowing to pressure by allowing racing to continue at Aintree for one more year. Meeting at Paddock Lodge on 6 March, the Tophams’ board was informed by the chairman of various exchanges on the subject between herself and the turf authorities. These followed advice to Mrs Topham to the effect that ‘it might be unwise to leave the course derelict for a long time pending planning permission.’ It was agreed that a further board meeting would be called in due course to make a decision.
Grand National day dawned on 27 March with the future of the race still uncertain. But racing fans would have been able to reflect that evening that if this was to be the last Grand National, or the last to be run at Aintree, then at least this great national institution had gone out with some style.
For one thing, there was a royal presence, with noted racing enthusiast the Queen Mother arriving to see her horse, The Rip, perform. She was accompanied by Princess Margaret, resplendent in a mohair tweed coat in what the local paper described as ‘overchecked aquamarine’. There was a good crowd, with an estimated 75,000 people on the course by 3pm. This in spite of the absence of 20,000 Liverpool fans, on a day trip to Birmingham to watch their team play Chelsea in the semi-final of the FA Cup. Aer Lingus were said to have operated five extra services. Even the railways behaved, with Princess Margaret’s train – ‘one of the five Aintree Specials from Euston’ – pulling into platform three of nearby Sefton Arms station a mere two minutes late. There was record prize money of more than £22,000. Finally, the race was an absolute corker, with Jay Trump from the United States just getting the better of the popular Scottish horse Freddie, his nostrils ‘inflamed like the inside of anemones’, after a hard-fought duel along Aintree’s excruciating run-in. The Rip was far from disgraced in seventh place. Once the bean-counters had done their work, it was discovered that takings were similar to 1958 levels, though expenses were, of course, higher.
By the week after the race, with Tophams’ appeal against Mr Justice Stamp’s judgement in favour of Lord Sefton soon to be heard, word of a possible temporary reprieve for the racecourse was spreading, with Mrs Topham acting as conduit. T
he Tophams’ chairman showed little originality in pinning the blame for the imminent U-turn on the slow pace of English justice. ‘Court proceedings inevitably take a long time,’ she told the Illustrated London News. ‘If there are enough delays, we may well see another Grand National at Aintree next year.’
In fact, Lord Justices Sellers, Harman and Russell reached their conclusions with commendable speed and on 28 May the appeal was dismissed. By this time Foinavon had been sold to a well-known horse dealer who lived near Clonsilla, west of Dublin, called Jack White.
With his trilby, his friendly demeanour and his raconteur’s gift, White was an Irish horseman out of central casting. He dealt in showjumpers as well as racehorses, maintained a network of contacts from Scandinavia to Italy and had a reputation for making sure that his friends struck good bargains as opposed to grasping every penny of profit for himself. He lived, slept and breathed horses. ‘When I married him, my only holiday would be to Cheltenham races or Doncaster sales,’ says Aline, his widow. ‘He was not a wealthy man, but very generous.’
White would have been one of the first men in Ireland to know that the 1966 Grand National would probably be run at Aintree after all. What is more, he would have recognised the consequences for the marketability of horses, such as Foinavon, with a qualification to run in the race – even if they had no chance of winning. Some time in April he paid the Duchess of Westminster £1,800, by no means a trifling sum, for her one-paced, seven-year-old gelding. On 20 April, the day after Tom Dreaper had saddled his sixth consecutive Irish Grand National winner, Foinavon ran in White’s name, for the one and only time, at Fairyhouse. He finished unplaced.
White was not the only man who had tried to buy Foinavon. His first jockey, Tony Cameron, had approached the duchess after witnessing a particularly unfruitful visit to Leopardstown. ‘I distinctly remember him coming up to the last fence and refusing,’ Cameron says. ‘He put his shoulder to the fence and just rolled over gently. I swear he did it on purpose. I have never seen another horse fall on purpose.’ Cameron put it to the duchess that, while he was clearly not enjoying his racing, he was a very clever horse and might make a three-day eventer. He never heard back from her.