Altisidora at Beverley: The St Leger Mare and Yorkshire's Racing Heritage

Breeding and Origins

Altisidora was a chestnut mare foaled in 1810 at Bishop Burton, the East Riding estate of Richard Watt. She was sired by Dick Andrews, a grandson of Eclipse — the unbeaten champion of the 1760s who is the foundation sire of the modern thoroughbred. Through Dick Andrews, Altisidora carried the direct bloodline of racing's most celebrated ancestor, which in the early nineteenth century was considered a mark of the highest quality.

Her dam was Mandane, one of the outstanding broodmares of the era. Mandane's other offspring included Manuella and the Chester Cup winner Brutandorf, confirming that Altisidora came from a mare of proven breeding quality rather than a modest foundation. The combination of Dick Andrews' Eclipse blood with Mandane's consistent production record gave Altisidora a pedigree that suggested she would be a racehorse of real class.

Richard Watt: Owner, Breeder, Trainer

Richard Watt of Bishop Burton was one of the dominant figures in Yorkshire racing in the first half of the nineteenth century. He was a landowner of substantial means, and he ran his racing operation from his Bishop Burton estate with the singular aim of winning the St Leger — a race he had studied and targeted with methodical purpose.

Watt bred, trained, and raced his horses himself, which was a relatively unusual combination even in an era when large landowners often controlled their entire racing operation. He used local Yorkshire tracks — including Beverley's Westwood — to develop his horses, building race fitness and competitive experience before aiming his best performers at Doncaster in September.

His achievement with Altisidora in 1813 was not an isolated stroke of luck. He followed it with three more St Leger victories: Barefoot (1823), Memnon (1825), and Rockingham (1833). Four St Leger winners from one Yorkshire estate over twenty years represents a record that stands in the sport's history as one of the most concentrated bursts of Classic breeding success Britain has ever seen.

Tommy Sykes and John Jackson

Altisidora was trained throughout her career by Tommy Sykes, a professional horseman in Watt's employ at Bishop Burton. Sykes worked with Watt's entire string and was responsible for the physical preparation of horses who would go on to Classic success — a significant contribution to a record that is often attributed entirely to the owner-breeder.

Her primary jockey was John Jackson, a leading northern rider of the period. Jackson rode Altisidora in most of her significant races, including the St Leger, and his partnership with the mare was one of the most effective jockey-horse combinations on the northern racing circuit in the early 1810s.

Career Overview

Altisidora first raced as a two-year-old in 1812, winning two of her three starts. Her unbeaten run continued into her three-year-old season in 1813, when she won three races including the St Leger at Doncaster over one mile, six furlongs and 132 yards — then as now the final Classic of the British season.

She continued to race at four in 1814, winning four races including a Great Subscription Purse at York and the Fitzwilliam Stakes at Doncaster. Her five-year-old season brought a mixed campaign of eight races, with four wins including a King's Plate at Richmond. She was an honest, durable performer who won at the highest level and continued to be competitive into her later seasons — a constitution that reflected well on both her breeding and the management she received at Bishop Burton.

Stud Career and Influence

Retired to stud, Altisidora produced a number of winners. Her most significant contribution as a broodmare was as the grandmother of Ralph, winner of the 2000 Guineas and the Ascot Gold Cup — confirming that her family could transmit excellence across generations. The breadth of her influence, from sprint-distance flat winners to an Ascot Gold Cup champion, speaks to the versatility of the bloodline she represented.

She died in 1825, having raced and bred for the East Riding of Yorkshire for the full span of her life. The Altisidora Inn at Bishop Burton, named after her, is the most visible reminder of her place in the locality's history.

Racing on the Westwood in the Early Nineteenth Century

Beverley's Westwood is one of England's oldest racing venues, with records of racing stretching back to 1690. In the early nineteenth century, when Altisidora was racing, the Westwood hosted a programme of subscription races, plate races, and sweepstakes that formed the backbone of Yorkshire's racing calendar between the major meetings at York and Doncaster.

For a local owner-breeder like Richard Watt, the Westwood served a specific purpose: it was where you ran your horses against quality local competition to test their readiness and build their race fitness before sending them to the more demanding contests further afield. The racing was serious — real prize money, real competition — but the context was developmental rather than climactic.

Altisidora's Beverley Races

Altisidora ran at Beverley during her career as part of the campaign Richard Watt structured around the Westwood's fixtures. The exact details of her individual races at Beverley are, at more than two centuries' remove, incompletely recorded in the surviving form books of the period, but the pattern of Watt's operation is well documented: he used Beverley consistently for his horses, and Altisidora was central to his string during her racing years of 1812 to 1815.

Her appearances on the Westwood were the competitive bedrock on which her later Classic victories were built. A horse who had raced at Beverley against quality northern competition came to Doncaster fit, experienced, and hardened in the way that a horse needs to be to handle the St Leger's specific demands: a big-race atmosphere, a long journey, a strongly-run mile and six furlongs, and experienced opposition from across Britain.

Richard Watt's Wider Beverley Programme

Watt's four St Leger winners — Altisidora, Barefoot, Memnon, and Rockingham — all went through the same Bishop Burton and Beverley development path. This pattern is significant. It confirms that Beverley was not a peripheral element of Watt's operation but central to it. He trusted the track's competitive programme to produce the fitness and experience his horses needed, and the record of four St Leger winners in twenty years suggests his judgement was sound.

The Watt Memorial Plate, run at Beverley over two miles in July, is named in his honour and remains part of the course's summer programme. It is a direct acknowledgement of his foundational role in connecting Beverley to the highest level of Classic competition.

The Beverley Track in the Early Nineteenth Century

The Westwood in Altisidora's era was a rougher, less well-maintained surface than the modern course. Racing facilities in the early nineteenth century were basic by contemporary standards — there was no grandstand of any sophistication, no formal enclosures, and the administrative infrastructure of the modern sport was decades away. What existed was a raceable surface, a programme of real competition, and a community of northern horse people who took their racing seriously.

For Altisidora, the Westwood was familiar ground. She had grown up at Bishop Burton, three miles to the west, and the Beverley circuit was part of the landscape of her racing life from the earliest stages of her career.

The Modern Track in Context

The Beverley of today is a different course from the one Altisidora ran on, though the Westwood location itself is unchanged. The right-handed oval, the stiff uphill finish, and the specific demands of the track on a horse's agility and stamina are the product of more than three centuries of racing on this particular piece of East Riding ground. The Beverley complete guide covers the modern track in detail, and the Beverley summer racing guide explains the annual programme that draws quality flat horses to the Westwood every season.

The 1813 St Leger

The greatest moment in Altisidora's career was not at Beverley but at Doncaster — the St Leger of September 1813, the last Classic of the season, run over one mile six furlongs and 132 yards at the Town Moor. Altisidora, a three-year-old chestnut mare trained locally in the East Riding, was ridden by John Jackson and returned the winner against a field of the best Classic hopefuls in Britain.

The St Leger was then, as it remains today, the oldest of the five Classics, first run in 1776. Winning it in 1813, under the rules and racing conditions of the Regency period, placed Altisidora among the elite performers of her generation. The victory was a product of everything that Richard Watt had built at Bishop Burton: the careful selection of bloodlines, the patient preparation through local Yorkshire meetings including Beverley, and the precise targeting of a single major race.

At Beverley, the response to the victory would have been substantial. Watt was a local figure of considerable standing, and his racing success at the national level reflected well on the Westwood and on the East Riding's place in the British racing world. A St Leger winner bred and developed in the villages west of Beverley was not a remote or abstract achievement — it was a local triumph.

Richard Watt's Four-St Leger Run

The broader great moment is not a single race but a twenty-year period in which Watt's Bishop Burton operation produced four winners of the same race. The first was Altisidora in 1813. The second was Barefoot in 1823 — a decade later, from the same estate, the same operation, the same Yorkshire base. Memnon followed in 1825. Rockingham in 1833 completed the sequence.

No other single owner-breeder in the Classic's history matched this concentration of success in such close succession. It was not luck but method: Watt selected his bloodlines deliberately, developed his horses carefully, and used Beverley as the local testing ground throughout.

Altisidora on the Westwood

The moments at Beverley itself were the preparation rather than the conclusion, but they were essential. A horse who arrives at Doncaster in September having raced competitively at Beverley in the summer months — having cantered the Westwood in the early morning, having been loaded and unloaded, having stood in unfamiliar stables and handled the atmosphere of a racecourse crowd — is a different horse from one who has only ever known the quiet of a home stable.

That daily, seasonal experience of Beverley Racecourse was the foundation of Altisidora's Classic success. The great moments were at Doncaster, but they were built on the Westwood.

Attraction's Hilary Needler Trophy, 2003

Beverley's modern chapter in the story of horses who went on to greatness came at the 2003 Hilary Needler Trophy, when a two-year-old filly named Attraction, trained by Mark Johnston and owned by the Duke of Roxburghe, won the five-furlong listed race with an authority that immediately attracted attention. The following season, Attraction won the English 1,000 Guineas, the Irish 1,000 Guineas, the Coronation Stakes, and eventually five Group 1 races in total — the best filly of her generation and the horse Mark Johnston later named as the one he was most proud of.

The Hilary Needler Trophy, named after its longtime sponsor, is Beverley's modern equivalent of what the Westwood's subscription races were in Watt's time: a listed-quality contest in which the best juvenile fillies are tested and identified before their Classic campaigns. Altisidora's heirs are horses like Attraction, and the thread connecting them runs through the Westwood.

The Altisidora Inn

The most tangible legacy of Altisidora's racing career is the pub that bears her name in Bishop Burton, the village where she was bred and where Richard Watt's estate was centred. The Altisidora Inn has stood as a reminder of the mare's local significance for more than two centuries, and it continues to operate as a functioning inn — one of the more unusual forms of horse racing commemoration.

The fact that a local pub was named after a racehorse tells you something specific about how the community related to Watt's success. Altisidora was not an abstract sporting achievement in a distant city. She was a local horse, bred from local bloodstock on a local estate, who won the biggest race in England. The inn name was a way of claiming that achievement for the village, for the East Riding, for the community that had produced her.

The Watt Memorial Plate

Beverley Racecourse itself commemorates Richard Watt through the Watt Memorial Plate, a race run over two miles in July. The name keeps alive the memory of the man who built the most concentrated Classic breeding success in the course's history. While most racegoers at Beverley today would not identify the race's origin without looking it up, the name is on the card, the connection is preserved, and the thread from Bishop Burton to the St Leger is maintained.

Beverley's Place in Yorkshire's Racing History

Altisidora's legacy at Beverley is inseparable from the broader story of Yorkshire as the dominant region in British flat racing. The county that gave the sport Altisidora, Blink Bonny, and Attraction in successive centuries — all prepared in part on Yorkshire's local tracks — is not coincidentally the heartland of flat racing in England. The networks of trainers, breeders, jockeys, and landowners who created that dominance used courses like Beverley as their proving grounds.

The Beverley history article tells the story of how those networks developed and why the Westwood became a permanent fixture in Yorkshire's racing calendar. Altisidora's story is the most historically significant chapter.

The Hilary Needler Trophy and the Long Thread

The Hilary Needler Trophy's roll of honour — connecting Altisidora's era to modern Classic winners like Attraction — is the clearest evidence that Beverley's role in identifying and developing future top performers has not diminished over three centuries. The methods are different, the infrastructure is modern, and the horses are thoroughbreds of an entirely different physical type. But the purpose is the same: Beverley is where quality horses come to prove their readiness before heading for the bigger stages.

That continuity of purpose, from 1813 to the present, is what Altisidora's legacy actually represents. She was the first great horse developed through the Beverley pathway to leave a mark on the Classic record books. She will not be the last.