It is well known that Newmarket is referred to as ‘The Home of Horseracing’. There are a long list of well-known, and indeed, well-deserved reasons for this, but not as many people know where it all began.

Newmarket’s Town Plate is widely recognised as the first recorded horserace in history to be run with a specific set of rules and therefore it is regarded as the birth of modern organised horseracing. The race was instigated by King Charles II in 1666 meaning that 2016 marked 350 years of horseracing in the town. The racing-mad monarch stated that the Town Plate should be run “forever” and it still is to this day, on the very same course!