Ashby Down races, by Our Racing Correspondent

An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

This report of a country horse-race meeting appeared in a regional newspaper in 1868.

The Ashby Down races, which take place on the open common above the town each June, drew a larger attendance on Thursday than at any meeting within memory. From an early hour every road was crowded with vehicles of every description, from the carriages of the county families to costermongers’ carts drawn by donkeys, and the railway company ran four special trains from the city, every one of them full.

The course is a long oval of turf, marked with white posts, and the grandstand, which holds some eight hundred persons, was full long before the first race. Around the rest of the course the crowd stood ten deep. A brass band played beside the rails, a travelling showman exhibited a pig which he declared could spell, and stalls sold oranges, ginger beer and hot eels.

The principal event, the Ashby Cup, worth one hundred sovereigns, was run at three o’clock over two miles. Eight horses started. The favourite, Lord Fennimore’s chestnut colt Firebrand, led until the last quarter of a mile, when he was overtaken by an outsider named Little Wren, owned by a farmer from the next parish and ridden by his own son. The shouting as the little mare passed the post a length in front could be heard, it is said, in the town below.

The day passed without serious accident, though the police removed several pickpockets from the enclosure.

(a) How many special trains did the railway company run? (b) What was the Ashby Cup worth? (c) Who rode Little Wren in the Ashby Cup?