Introduction

The nature of a first encounter with Newmarket is determined to a large extent by the season and the time of day at which the unsuspecting visitor arrives. Arrive on a wintry afternoon and an eerie calm permeates the town, the most energetic activities being shopping, pensioner-style. Late at night, particularly during the summer, the stable lads venture out into the town. One may find a brightly clothed, noisy mass of people moving between the four nightclubs and numerous pubs of the High Street, buzzing with excitement and creating an atmosphere described by locals as ‘like a street party’. Arrive in Newmarket early on a spring morning, however, and something of its true purpose will be revealed. The hundreds of racehorses who spend the rest of the day hidden away in the stables that are tucked into every corner of the town take over, and standing amongst the milling horses one is reminded that this is a town in which, as I was told, ‘everything is horse’.

This chapter is based upon a discussion of landscape, language and appearance. I shall begin by introducing the town of Newmarket through a historical account of the development of its link with horseracing. This account reflects the dominance of racing voices amongst the historians of Newmarket. I have not found a history of Newmarket told independently from that of horseracing, and my own account reproduces this symbiosis and is thus ‘bad’ history, but consciously so.