A patrician who is sorely missed

By Ian Carnaby

I was trying to park the car in Reading the other day whilst thinking about the Royal Hunt Cup and the strong possibility that Forgotten Voice was in the nature of a good thing.

Reading seems to be growing. I can remember when the football team’s efforts
warranted a paragraph or two in the Southampton ‘Pink’ of a Saturday evening, alongside Aldershot and just above Basingstoke Town. Of course, I’m going back to the old Third Division South days, when Northampton Town came to The Dell and somehow gained a point from a 2-2 draw. Cobblers Hold On in Battle of the Hamptons as one headline had it the following day.

I only mention it because the Saints are due to play Northampton again in August, which just goes to show that if you can hold on for 50 years, everything comes round again. It won’t be at The Dell, of course, and Terry Paine is in South Africa preparing for the World Cup, but I shall be there, in the stadium we couldn’t afford but is really rather splendid. Southampton seem to have lived their life the way I’ve lived mine - not the splendid bit of course, not in my case anyway, just the days in the sun bit with a final reckoning inching closer. Maybe we’ll both wriggle out of it.

Near Reading station there is a pub called the Blagrave Arms. But for a London engagement I’d have dallied there because it looked very smart and I wondered if there was any memorabilia around the walls. Daniel Blagrave, educated locally, was an MP between 1640 and 1660 and one of the signatories of King Charles I’s death warrant. He probably thought he was on pretty safe ground at the time - I can identify with that - and had even allowed the Earl of Essex to use Southcote Manor as the Roundhead HQ during the Siege of Reading.

Needless to say, he had to move pretty sharpish upon the restoration of Charles II. The latter may have dallied with Nell Gwyn, but he’d almost certainly have taken care of Daniel, as well, so he fled to Aachen, in Germany, and saw out his time there.

Herbert Blagrave left the Linkenholt Estate to a charitable trust

It goes without saying that the Blagraves were fairly rich. More recently Herbert Blagrave, who turned his arm over for Gloucestershire when the world was young and later became president of Southampton FC, left the entire estate of the north Hampshire village of Linkenholt to a charitable trust which was set up to provide funds for disabled children and injured jockeys. Earlier this year the entire village - forge, cricket pitch, twenty-two houses and cottages - was put on the market for £22.5m, though the Trust will reinvest the proceeds and continue to function as before.

Herbert Blagrave ran a successful private stable from 1928 onwards, based at The Grange in Beckhampton. For a relatively small operation - he trained only for himself and his wife Gwendolen, who died in 1968 - he enjoyed remarkable success at Royal Ascot, winning the Royal Hunt Cup with Couvert in 1938 and the same race with Master Vote in both 1947 and 1948.

Master Vote was the first horse ever to win the big handicap two years in a row. He was by Atout Maitre, whom Blagrave had bought from M. Leon Volterra. The foundation of Blagrave’s success was the fusion of the best of British and French blood; another French-bred, Honorable II, won the Ascot Stakes in 1950, though his best horse was the filly Chinese Cracker, who won the Oaks Trial and the Ribblesdale and was desperately unlucky in the Oaks itself, where she was trapped on the rails and just beaten by Neasham Belle.

Blagrave had room at Beckhampton for only some 25 horses, which meant that Ian Balding looked after a few more at Kingsclere. The Southampton connection runs quite deep, because Ian, Toby and Andrew Balding are all supporters, no doubt suffering along with the rest of us.

Blagrave himself died in 1981. He and Gwen were childless, which probably facilitated his decision regarding Linkenholt and the Trust. The pair are remembered at Salisbury every year via the Herbert and Gwen Blagrave Memorial Stakes. They are certainly remembered in the Southampton boardroom - Lord only knows what he would have made of the current situation, though I dare say he would not have allowed it to happen - and I hope they are remembered in the Blagrave Arms, too.

I shall soon find out.