Bath Races 1756

In 1756, a two-day Bath race meeting took place on Claverton Down on Wednesday 22nd and Thursday 23rd of September.

Any owner who wished to enter his, almost all owners were men, had to take their horse to The Lamb Inn in Bath, which was overseen by a Mrs Figg, on Saturday the 18th. 

The Lamb Inn was on Stall Street in Bath. The more recent establishment, the Lamb and Lion on Lower Borough Walls is a remodelling of the Lamb's stables. It is known that the Lamb was an Inn by 1718 but had probably been established at least a century before. By 1756, the Inn was the starting point for coaches to Devon and Cornwall [2]

At the inn, the owners would need to provide evidence that their horse met the qualifying conditions for the race they wished to enter. This was usually done via a Certificate completed in a standard format, as in the example below from the Sporting Kalendar of 1755.

If the certificate was not produced on the Saturday it had to be shown before the race.

Both races require at least three horses in each race to be 'reputed Running horses &c'. Owners had to pay a two guineas entrance if a subscriber to the meeting and, in addition, a five-shilling fee to the clerk of the Course; a non-subscriber had to pay three guineas and five shillings to the Clerk of the Course or pay double at the starting post. If only one horse was entered for a race, the owner would be given Ten Guineas and have his entrance money returned. Any disputes and objections were to be settled by 'Gentlemen at the Stand', i.e. those who had subscribed to be in the grandstand.

At the races, horses could only be fitted with their racing plates by one of the Smiths, who had half a guinea for the privilege. People who wanted to set up a stall to sell liquor on the Down had to pay a fee of one guinea. 

Horses placed either first or second on the first day were forbidden from entering races on the second day.

On both days, the organisers promoted backsword contests on the course to add to the entertainment. Backsword contests involved fencing with the wooden sticks used for training in the use of single-edged weapons.

The first day of the meeting consisted of a race for a £50 purse for any horse that had not won the value of fifty pounds in 1756 (matches between two horses were not included in this calculation).  The race was a handicap with five-year-olds carrying eight stone seven pounds and six-year-olds carrying nine stone seven pounds. Older horse (referred to as aged) twelve stone. As happens today, the bridle and saddle were included in these weights. The race consisted of three four-mile heats.[1]

This race was won by Mr Corker's Dishonesly, a 6-year-old bay horse. It is not certain who Mr Corker was, but he may have been a scion of the Cornish Corkers who were prominent in the African slave trade.

The next day, Thursday the 23rd, the race was for a purse of fifty pounds and was open to any horse, mare or gelding that had yet to win more than one fifty-pound plate in 1756. As with Wednesday, the race was a handicap with five-year-olds carrying ten stone four pounds; six-year-olds carrying seven stone four pounds. Older horse (referred to as aged) twelve stone. This race was also run over three four-mile heats. This race was won by Lord Craven's chestnut horse, Barforth Ball.

Lord Craven was Fulwar Craven, 4th Baron Craven (died 10 November 1764), educated at Rugby School and Magdalen College, Oxford. He became High Steward of Newbury and was about to stand for Parliament for Berkshire when his brother William's death in 1739 brought him the Barony of Craven.
He was famously fond of racing and hunting, hunting on his Berkshire estates at Hamstead Marshall and Ashdown Park, keeping his own stud of racehorses and founding a racecourse at Lambourn. He and his brother William founded the Craven Hunt, and he appears in James Seymour's 1743 A Kill at Ashdown Park. 

Via the Tate Gallery

Craven resided at Coombe Abbey, near Coventry in Warwickshire, when not hunting. He continued to hunt until his death at old Benham Park in 1764 after a long illness. He was buried at Hamstead Marshall and, being unmarried and childless, was succeeded by his nephew William. The early Craven Barons had been soldiers and courtiers and, as a result of the service, had gained large colonial estates, particularly in America.

The Barforth part of the winner's names suggest breeding for on one the horse of the Croft family stud at Barfoth in Country Durham whose stud and breeding lines were important in the creation of the thoroughbred race horse.

1. Boddely’s Bath Journal August 16th 1756
2. Bath Pubs Kirsten Elliot and Andrew Swift