The Jockey Club Rooms, based on Newmarket’s High Street, is arguably one of the most exclusive clubs in the country, boasting no less than six Prime Ministers on its list of members.
As impressive as this is, the venue is so much more than just a members’ club, it is the place where the sport of horseracing as we know it was shaped.
It all began with a group of gentlemen meeting up regularly at the Star and Garter pub in London’s Pall Mall to share a mutual passion for horseracing. Soon afterwards, the club relocated to Newmarket where it built a Coffee House to host its future meetings.
The rules that this small group of racing enthusiasts established to ensure fair racing on Newmarket’s Heath proved so successful that they were quickly adopted by other racecourses across the country and the world. Eventually, after much development and growth, the group took on the responsibility of becoming the official governing body for horseracing in Britain.
This group was, of course, The Jockey Club, and the original Coffee House still survives to this day as part of the Jockey Club Rooms.
If you are interested in visiting the very room where many of the most important decisions in the evolution of horseracing were made, click here to find out more.
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