The condensed 2020 horse racing season saw one of racing's blue riband events, The Oaks, was run on Saturday 4th July 2020 at Epsom and took place on the same day as The Derby for the first time. It was won by Love - with the horse, jockey, trainer and owners all from Ireland or the south of England; but turn the clock way back 165 years to The Oaks of 1855 and it was very much an East Yorkshire occasion with the jockey from Burnby, the horse trained up the road at Norton while the owner was the lord of the manor of Hayton.

Marchioness and Sim Templeman after their 1855 victory in The Oaks.

For a major race to throw up so many local connections in the mid-19th century is not really surprising as at the time the Pocklington district was a hotbed of horse racing, with the surrounding villages producing a stream of top jockeys and the town having its own racecourse at the end of The Balk. . The 1855 Oaks winner was 'Marchioness', again steeped in local links as its granddam and several earlier generations had been bred at Low Catton.The horse's jockey was Sim Templeman, who was born and grew up at Everingham and lived at Burnby for much of his life, and the successful owner was Billy Rudston-Read, who was the penultimate member of his family to be the Squire of Hayton.

Marchioness lined up at Epson as a 12/1 outsider in a field of 11. The bay mare had only raced once before, at Doncaster the previous year when placed second; but when the race's hot favourite stumbled, Marchioness took up the running and won by half a length. After her Oaks triumph Marchioness raced just four more times the following year without any success and was retired to stud. She was subsequently shipped to Australia and played a more important part in thoroughbred horse breeding Down Under.

For Templeman 1855 was his third Oak's win in a somewhat more longstanding and successful racing career than his mount. He was the son of a tenant farmer on the Everingham estate who showed promise as a rider from childhood; making his debut as a jockey at Malton aged just 13, riding for Pocklington GP Dr Bell, who kept stables behind his surgery at Oak House. Small and wiry, he had an unusual style with his legs straight out in front of him, but had considerable success, particularly in big meetings at Epsom, where he also won three Derbies, making a fortune from racing and buying a substantial farming estate at Hayton and Burnby. His financial future was secured by his 1839 Derby success - he guided 32/1 long shot, Bloomsbury, to victory in a snowstorm and was given a reward of £2,000 by the delighted owner, an enourmous sum for a humble jockey. He used this windfall to knock down his modest cottage in Burnby and replace it with the substantial Burnby House, while also buying a property on The Balk, now named Bloomsbury House after the racehorse, where he is believed to have lived until his Burnby development was complete.

For the 1855 owner, Rudston-Read, landing The Oaks was the biggest win of his long career as a owner, breeder and racecourse official. The Rudston family had been lords of the manor of Hayton for some 500 years, but by the mid-19th cetury their mansion had been demolished and though Rudston-Read took a keen interest in Hayton affairs, building a new school and restoring the church, he preferred to spend most of his time in York. He never married, and the estate was left to his nephew and subsequently sold to Major Stewart in the 1920s.

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