Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church

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Inaugural Carolina Cup] Fox hunting and steeplechasing came to America with the Irish and English who settled in the eastern part of the United States. Even before the Civil War there were recognized race meetings in New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Virginia, and racing soon spread to the Carolinas and Georgia. As always, there is some disagreement about who did what first, but there is a record of a jumping race being held in Washington, D.C. as early as 1834. At about the same time, under the English influence, steeplechasing was gaining a foothold in eastern Canada. The Queens Cup Steeplechase is held annually on the last Saturday of April at Brooklandwood, a farm and estate in Mineral Springs, North Carolina, about 20 miles (32km) from Charlotte. At the last four funerals I have been to, there hasn’t been a single hymn. I shouldn’t be too surprised: the growing unpopularity of Christian rituals of death is one of the signs of our times. As an example, consider this: direct cremations (no service, no mourners) used to be almost unheard of – even murderers and paupers got some sort of ceremonial send-off into the afterlife. Now they account for one in four of all funerals. This is a wonderful tour of Britain and her people using our churches as the anchor for telling stories, both ancient and modern. By most accounts, the first steeplechase race was held in 1752 in County Cork, Ireland, where a horseman named O’Callaghan engaged Edmund Blake in a match race, covering approximately 4 1/2 miles from Buttevant Church to St. Mary’s Doneraile, whose tower was known as St. Leger Steeple. Indeed, church steeples were the most prominent — and tallest — landmarks on the landscape, and the sport took its name from the chase to the steeple. History did not record the winner of the O’Callaghan-Blake match, or if either of them completed their cross-country chase.

Barrett, Norman, ed. (1995). The Daily Telegraph Chronicle of Horse Racing. Enfield, Middlesex: Guinness Publishing.

Steeplechase (athletics), an event in athletics that derives its name from the steeplechase in horse racing steeple +‎ chase, from horse races in 18th century Ireland in which orientation of the course was by reference to a church steeple. Each decade of American’s steeplechasing’s history is marked by at least one superstar, a horse of transcendent talents who captures multiple championships and a multitude of fans. In the 1990s, that horse was Lonesome Glory, and in the first decade of the new century McDynamo proved to be a dynamo – especially when he set foot on the racecourse at Far Hills, New Jersey. Eventing's Short and Long Formats Compared". thehorse.com. June 2005. Archived from the original on 11 October 2017 . Retrieved 9 October 2017. Steeplechase Park, a New York City amusement park from 1897 to 1964, named for its racing rollercoaster

Jumps racing hits the wall". The Age. Melbourne. 2009-11-27. Archived from the original on 2009-11-28 . Retrieved 2009-11-27. John Hislop, an English horseman who wrote a definitive book about steeplechasing, perhaps best described the differences between the two Thoroughbred racing sports. Although speaking about England and Irish racing, his distinction is equally accurate for American steeplechasing. He wrote:

The Revd Dr Colin Heber-Percy is a Team Vicar in the Savernake Team Ministry. He is the author of Tales of a Country Parish (Short Books, 2022). The New York Turf Writers Cup is held each year at Saratoga Race Course, attracting the best steeplechasing horses in the U.S. With many churches facing closure due to falling rolls and falling income, it is clear throughout the book that churches are not just places of worship but play a vital role in communities. This can take many forms such as running a foodbank or soup kitchen, providing a welcoming safe space for anyone who needs it, being the place where addiction support groups, counselling groups, youth organisations, toddlers groups and so much more take place. When the buildings go, what will happen to these vital services? Auteuil in Paris is the best known racecourse in France for French jump racing, with the biggest jumps, along with Pau. The Grand Steeple Grade I race is held at Auteuil in June. Peter Ross’s Steeple Chasing: Around Britain by Church, a natural sequel to his 2020 book on the pleasures of graveyard browsing, A Tomb With A View, is a tour of these acts of worship in stone and glass; a massive church crawl which begins on a dark December morning at Pluscarden Abbey outside Elgin – as bells call the Benedictine monks to prayer – and ends 18 months later on Holy Island at dawn on the longest day.