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On
2nd January 1957 a complete outsider
battled up
Cheltenham’s awesome hill, passed the fancied Polonius
after the last jump, and outstayed all his rivals to win the
4-mile Fred Withington Handicap Chase by 2 lengths. His price
was
25-1 with the bookmakers, and a staggering 116-1 on the Tote. The
horse’s name was Henry Purcell, and he
was owned and trained by
Mr E C Smith for his wife Carmen at Church Farm, Priston. The
win
was all the more amazing because ‘Henry’
had
recently jumped so badly that his owners had decided to pay
the
forfeit and withdraw him from the Fred Withington. But
they’d
left it too late, and the horse had to run. They
hadn’t even got
a jockey for him, and at short notice were lucky to find Ray Richards,
a local farmer’s son who had just turned
professional. The
Sporting Life of 3 January
said
“Henry Purcell had won a 3-mile chase at Taunton
early in November …. but
he had failed completely in his 3 subsequent
races, and the measure of confidence reposed in this 25-1 chance can be
gauged by the fact that Mr E C Smith, who trains him ….. did not attend to see him
run.”
By
winning the Fred Withington ‘Henry’
automatically qualified for that year’s Grand National, but
the press,
and his owners, were all emphatically and equally dismissive:
“Asked if Henry Purcell had been entered for the Grand
National Mr Chivers,
who was deputising for the trainer,
replied: “Good gracious, no.
He’s merely a hurdler”.
‘Henry’ may have been
‘merely a hurdler’, but he had also run
seventeen ‘chases, of which he had won three. He
was well-bred,
with bloodlines to the mighty Hyperion, winner of
seven
Classics. His maternal grandsire was Derby winner
Spion
Kop. He was also, in Priston, a much loved horse.
People remember him as ‘The Peppermint
Horse’, so passionately
fond of them that he would shake hands, unasked, if he heard the
sweetie bag rustle. He was reputed to have cost his owner a
fortune in confectionery. All the village children knew and
loved
him, and they must have seen a lot of him, for he was trained on the
200-acre Church Farm, except in frosty weather when Mr Smith would take
him down to the sands at Weston super Mare.
Henry
Purcell started life as a
point-to-pointer in Northumberland, and the Fred Withington was the
peak of his career to date. However in the same year he was
fifth
in the Welsh Grand National at Chepstow – no mean feat in
what is the
longest steeplechase in Britain.
The horse
didn’t race in 1958, after being injured at Wincanton, and
had just 4
outings before the 1959 Grand National. ‘Henry’s’
sweet
tooth was by now common knowledge, and the press enjoyed themselves
with headlines like “Villagers hope to make a mint on 200-1
Henry”. The Racing Mirror was
much taken with him:
‘I
can tell you the greatest danger to Grand
National outsider Henry Purcell bringing off a 200-1 win at Aintree
tomorrow. It is not
any of the 30-odd runners. Nor
any of the 30
fences. It’s a bag
of peppermints.
One sniff of peppermints among the rail-side spectators and as likely
as not Henry will stop running, walk over to the
peppermint-flaunting onlooker and raise a hoof for
him – or her –
to shake. “He’s such a pet
– knows all the tricks” says his
owner, Mrs Carmen Smith.
Henry may
be the horse bookmakers consider the least likely to win the Grand
National, but at home on the Smiths’ farm at
Priston, Somerset, in
the shadow of the Mendip Hills, he is one of the
family. Priston’s
267 villagers are on him to a man (£10
to a bob), and the Smiths’ 8-year old son Colin will
be cheering
the horse on from his Maidenhead prep. school.
His mother wrote to the headmaster to ask permission for Colin
to
listen to the radio commentary. Mrs Smith is hoping
for
rain before the race because he is a mudlark.
And if Henry doesn’t win …Mrs Smith is threatening
to ration his
peppermints’
Twelve-year-old
Henry’s young jockey
for the National was Tony Keen, who, like his mount, had never been
round the Aintree course. Connections however were
still
confident, because of Henry’s stamina,
and care over bigger
jumps. Alas, “The Peppermint Horse” would
never return to
Priston. At the start of the race he was up with the
leaders. He was lying sixth, and jumped the first
five
fences perfectly. At Becher’s
Brook disaster struck. He took off all right, but buckled
over
the jump and was the third of eight horses to fall there.
Tony
Keen was knocked out. ‘Henry’
did not get up. He had
broken his back, and was shot where he lay.
“Tears
for Henry” said the racing
papers. Tributes flowed – “Such a
pet”;
“We shall miss the horse very
much”; “The whole village is
very upset about it” said George Kelson,
Priston’s
sub-postmaster.
The
Daily Express Photo News Extra headline
perhaps said it best – “Priston Mourns its
Horse”.
Aylet Anderson
March 2006
{With many thanks to Colin Smith for making so much
material on Henry Purcell available to me}
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