Epsom: a world-famous racing town, an inspiring place to train - but where are all the horses?

This article by Lewis Porteous, part of our Racing Heartlands series, was originally published in July exclusively for Racing Post Members' Club subscribers and has been made free to read for users of the Racing Post app as our Sunday Read. Lewis visited the home of the Derby, Epsom, which is one of the world's most famous racing towns but no longer boasts the numbers of old.

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Watching a small number of Jim Boyle's string working on the gallops in Epsom, barely a furlong away from the starting point of the Derby and with the racecourse grandstand as the backdrop, it is hard to think of a more inspiring place to train thoroughbreds.

In fact, you'd think trainers would be queuing up for the pleasure – but the four horses who make up Boyle's third lot at 8.30am are the only racehorses in sight.

At its peak, when Epsom was churning out everything from Classic winners to Grand National stars, close to 600 horses called the host of the Derby home at any one time. On a sun-kissed Thursday in 2023, it is clear times have changed.

The communal facilities may never have been better but, according to the Horses in Training bible, there are currently just 217 thoroughbreds trained in Epsom and, without wishing to offend the current team of ten trainers based in the historic racing town, not too many star names from that number come rushing to mind.

"I wouldn't want to train anywhere else," says Boyle, who is well qualified to comment having worked in Newmarket, Lambourn and Middleham. "I love what Epsom has to offer. Since the Jockey Club has come in, we're seeing real good upgrades to the facilities up on the Downs and it's a bloody good place to train racehorses. If you can't train a horse here, you can't train one anywhere. You're within an urban area but it's very much got a countryside feel to it and gives you the best of both worlds."

The famous Downs offer 250 acres of maintained training grounds, including six miles of turf gallops and three miles of artificial tracks. There are even schooling facilities for jumps horses, including trotting logs, hurdles and fences and, while the turf on the chalk downs gallops has a tendency to dry out quickly, trainers are lacking for nothing in Epsom, which is why it is disconcerting to see the facilities underutilised.

Boyle says: "It's not like Newmarket where you're constantly bumping into other trainers and strings, and having to queue for gallops and all that business, it's a lovely relaxed atmosphere but there is a good camaraderie between trainers. It's not horribly cut-throat and everyone just wants to see Epsom-trained winners."

Epsom's zenith as a training centre spanned the three decades after the Second World War, a period bookended by Straight Deal's success in Newmarket's wartime Derby for champion trainer Walter Nightingall in 1943 and Specify's Grand National triumph for John Sutcliffe snr in 1971.

In 1952, six of the top 20 trainers in Britain were based at Epsom. It was the fashionable place to have horses and the town's owners included Sir Winston Churchill, who had his string trained by Nightingall at South Hatch Stables, now home to Boyle. As late as 1970 it was home to 19 trainers and more than 500 racehorses.

Close to central London, it appealed to wealthy foreign owners. Khalid Abdullah and Fahd Salman had their first horses trained in Epsom with Ron Smyth at Clear Height Stables, so the foundation of bloodstock behemoth Juddmonte was here in the Surrey town, which was also responsible for the first winner on British soil in the colours of Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum when Shaab, trained by John Benstead at The Limes, won in 1979.

Pauline Ashworth, who came to Epsom in 1973 to work for Benstead, remembers a bustling racing town where everyone knew one another.

"If you walk up Newmarket high street today, you'll see people in their jodhpurs and that's what it used to be like in Epsom, but there were a lot more people working here then," recalls Ashworth, who later worked for Epsom trainers Geoff Lewis and John Akehurst but now drives a taxi in the town. "In the pubs, it's very rare you'd come across the younger people [who work in racing] now. It's a different world and I miss it.

"We have more facilities now and there are no problems there. I'd say horses are more settled here too. It's a nice place to train and close to London, but the big trainers in Epsom died off and the money has gone to Newmarket and Lambourn. Money speaks and a lot of the good training yards have disappeared and houses have been built on them."

Epsom stalwart Brooke Sanders, a former champion female amateur rider who went on to saddle Double Dutch to win the 1989 Cesarewitch when she trained in the town, has similar memories of a bygone age when big strings were a common sight on the Downs.

Epsom stalwart Brooke Sanders pictured at her homeCredit: Edward Whitaker

"It was a thriving racing centre, with lots of trainers, lots of horses, lots of stable staff and lots of fun," she says. "We didn't have the traffic that's around today and even in Langley Vale where I live, which is right on the Downs, there were four or five racing yards and there's not one now. It's all built on. As a kid, I remember seeing Walter Nightingall out on the gallops with 40 horses at a time and you don't see that anymore.

"The trainers we have are all very positive. They work and try very hard and I certainly don't want to sound like I'm running it down, because I'm not. I'm just saying it's not what it was."

Epsom town centre, a five-minute drive from the racecourse, is a hive of activity on a sunny day. A pleasant market town, it has the usual staples of Wetherspoons, McDonald's and any number of places to get your hair cut. But any sort of connection to its racing heritage is harder to identify.

Whereas Newmarket has the Jockey Club Rooms and National Horseracing Museum bang in the middle of town and Lambourn is immersed in racing, this feels like any other town centre in Britain and certainly not the home of the Derby.

The view up Epsom high streetCredit: Edward Whitaker

"The whole town has almost pulled away from the racing side of it," says trainer Michael Attwater, whose directions to his yard were simple: "Head to the five-furlong start and you'll find us."

He continues: "They're almost two separate things, whereas it used to be very much a racing town. I don't suppose the Derby even means that much to some of the people who live in Epsom even though it's only up the road.

"You look at Aintree. The town makes such a big deal of Grand National day and here the Derby feels like an inconvenience to some people which is a shame."

There is still some magic about the place, however. Perhaps not on the high street but up at Tattenham Corner, just a few hundred metres from a memorial plaque that marks the point where suffragette Emily Davison was killed when she ran in front of the King's horse Anmer in the 1913 Derby, it is impossible not to feel the history of the place.

It's standing room only on Tattenham Corner green, overlooking the famous Derby course and Downs from its elevated perch. The car park is full and the benches long since snapped up. It's the sort of place you could sit for hours and never tire; it's just a shame that Epsom's rich racing history is not reflected in the number of horses trained here.

The town's fortunes changed in the 1990s when training titans such as Geoff Lewis, John Sutcliffe jnr and John Benstead all retired in close succession. Although by that time their stings had dwindled, they had trained for the great and good and it signalled the end of an era for Epsom. Its popularity has never really recovered.

A memorial plaque marking the point where suffragette Emily Davison was killedCredit: Edward Whitaker

The improved road transport links that had made it such a desirable place to have horses also started to count against it. Increased traffic made many outlying yards unviable and as the ripple effect from London grew, property prices soared. Stables, with their outbuildings and space to develop, were worth so much that any situated on brown belt land had to be sold to the developers purely on an economic basis.

"We used to be the biggest training centre in Britain and the vast majority of that loss is down to those yards no longer being yards," says Boyle. "A lot of the people who were objecting to the development of our yard were living in houses sat on the site of old training yards, which is rather ironic."

The majority of the stables that remain sit on sacred green belt land, which has meant anyone with designs of improving outdated facilities but who require some kind of property development to make it viable, like Boyle, have faced an uphill battle to gain the necessary planning permission. It has taken more than eight years but with builders and machinery, rather than horses and work riders, the first thing on show pulling into Boyle's stable on Burgh Heath Road, work to regenerate his historic but dilapidated yard is finally off and running.

South Hatch was once home to Epsom's most famous family, the Nightingalls. It sits in a prime location close to the Downs but, plagued with potholes and creaking wooden stables, it's a shadow of its former glory.

How it has taken so long for permission to bring it into the 21st century to be granted is difficult to fathom but Boyle has admirably stuck at it and, while his training career has been held back due to the archaic infrastructure around him, the town will soon have a modern training facility to shout about.

Building work has finally started at Jim Boyle's South Hatch Stables in EpsomCredit: Edward Whitaker

"This has always been our dream," he says. "We first spoke to the council about 19 years ago because we knew the yard was on its last legs then. We've finally got the green light and we're going at it full tilt. I'd very much like to think that by the end of this year we'll have our horses moved into new facilities. It's going to be pretty special."

Boyle will eventually have a brand new 60-box yard, while the site of the current yard will house 46 apartments, plans for which have undoubtedly slowed the process but which are essential to fund the project.

Epsom enjoyed a fillip in 2014 when Jockey Club Estates took over the management of the training grounds. As well as refurbishing some of the gallops, the organisation was involved in creating 'A Vision For Epsom', a project that drew together trainers, the BHA, and Epsom and Ewell Council among others to create a united front and devise ambitious plans for the area's training industry.

South Hatch is a good example of where recent progress has been made and there's further evidence of better times ahead hidden away behind the trees down at the start of the Derby.

There lies Downs House Stables, the jewel amongst Epsom's training establishments and once home to Eclipse, the unbeaten champion who helped shape the modern thoroughbred.

More recently home to the Mitchell family, the leasehold was sold to Mark and Victoria Travers in 2016. Having been unused for several years, Downs House had also fallen into a state of disrepair but the new owners have reimagined the stable and a masterpiece is taking shape.

A new stable block, fit for 70 horses and an epic mix of flint, brick and wood work, has been constructed. Built to the highest specification, it can only be described as five-star equine accommodation. Landscaping of the grounds and the renovation of outbuildings are still to be completed but a state of the art yard worthy of its position on the Downs has been born.

The state of the art stables at Downs House in EpsomCredit: Edward Whitaker

"There's a bit to go but the idea is it will be a flagship yard," says Travers, who is hoping there could be runners from Downs House by the end of next summer.

An accountant whose father previously trained in New Zealand where he grew up, Travers continues: "Having the site so close to the start of the Derby and having a yard with the hundreds of years of history this has, being associated with Eclipse, it just seemed such a unique opportunity to try to restore it and bring a unique piece of racing history back to life. To try to give something back to Epsom racing and the community that was at risk of being lost.

"Epsom is an undervalued training ground in terms of its access for owners that are based in London and the south east to easily see their horse on a regular basis. It's a beautiful spot up on the Downs and being located on the outskirts of London, I think that brings a great opportunity with it. We're trying to pitch this as an area that will attract good horses and to do that you've got to show you're differentiating and that it's a premier establishment."

Travers will ultimately lease the yard to a trainer and it will be interesting to see who the new look Downs House attracts when completed. Along with South Hatch, it is the sort of yard that could be a game changer in the battle to attract the best back to Epsom.

Travers, 47, says: "I think at the moment on Epsom Downs, you don't have that critical mass, which makes it a horse town that everyone knows about, that Lambourn and Newmarket has. Here it's a commuter town and the horses get in the way but if you can start putting out bigger lots in quick succession in the morning, which is what we should do, then you start to feel more like it's a racing gallops and I think that brings a different feel to the gallops and whole area.

"The more horses you have in Epsom, the more owners will come and the more trainers will look at Epsom as a viable option. That's why myself and Jim Boyle are trying to do this collaboratively with the Jockey Club. The big prize is Epsom being the number three training centre and recognised as that. When people buy a horse you want them to think: do I have it trained in Newmarket, Lambourn or Epsom? That comes from not just Downs House but the overall package of how you market Epsom."

The refurbished Downs House Stables in EpsomCredit: Edward Whitaker

Like the plans at South Hatch, Downs House will include accommodation for stable staff, historically another sticking point to attracting new blood to Epsom due to the rising cost of living in the suburbs of London.

"An injection of horses would be massive for Epsom," says Attwater, who is genuinely delighted to see the plans of his neighbours coming to fruition. "In particular Downs House, that's a real high-end development and it's pretty special what they're doing down there. You'd almost be frightened to let a horse in there – it's fantastic!

"You hope it could bring a higher-quality horse, which hopefully could have a knock-on effect. That then pushes the Jockey Club to invest more money in the facilities. If someone could get one big owner to come and things worked out well, maybe that would encourage others to have another look."

Boyle agrees that one big owner or one Group 1 horse trained by anyone in Epsom could be the catalyst to bring the glory days back to the town.

"We know the potential of Epsom and it's not far from being a perfect training centre," he says. "It just lacks some of the critical infrastructure in terms of some of the yards to attract more owners. That's the missing link and if our project and some of the others which are going on can fill that missing link, it will be a huge step forward for Epsom.

"The other thing you'd love to see on a site somewhere is two or three 20-box starter yards, so you could attract young trainers starting up, but the rot has stopped and we're gradually looking at building numbers back up. We're starting to get there."

Coming next week:  

Stockbridge: The Lost Heartland - don't miss Peter Thomas's fascinating look at how the major training centre of the 19th century fell on hard times and then fell off the racing map, available to read in the Racing Post or exclusively online for Members' Club Ultimate subscribers . . .

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Martin Pipe: 'I wanted to commit suicide. I really did, knowing the world was against me' 

Shark Hanlon: 'I'm a nice, gentle shark - but I don't think the bookies like to see me coming!' 

Leonna Mayor: 'People have no idea what my life has been like - I've no reason to be ashamed' 

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