It was James I who had been responsible for founding a royal house at Newmarket in 1605. At first he had leased an inn, The Griffin, to stay in, but he soon bought and demolished it and built himself a handsome new residence which became one of his most favoured houses. Here James entertained ambassadors, watched plays performed by actors from Cambridge and, most importantly, he hunted.
While James I was not particularly interested in racing, his son, Charles I, was. We know that the first Gold Cup run at Newmarket probably took place in 1634. But it was Charles II who founded the Newmarket we know today building the first stables and founding England’s most venerable training establishment. Charles was not a mere spectator. He owned and rode horses and twice won the Newmarket Town Plate a race that is still run today
During the Commonwealth one of the regicides, Colonel Okey, had almost completely demolished the Jacobean palace, so when Charles II arrived at Newmarket in March 1666 he saw a patch of empty ground where his father’s house had formerly stood. The King must have liked what he saw for within two years he had bought a site for the construction of a new palace.
What is very interesting about Charles’s Newmarket Palace is that the responsibility for designing it was not given to the Office of Works but to the East Anglian architect William Samwell. Samwell is today an under-rated architect who deserves more attention.
What Samwell designed at Newmarket was a smooth lesson in Caroline Dutch classicism; in plan it was very interesting. Samwell adopted the French pavilion plan, in other words the creation of small square linked pavilions in which the king’s and queen’s lodgings were more-or less self-contained.
We don’t know precisely how the rooms were laid out yet we are certain that the room in the south pavilion was the king’s bedchamber in which his state bed was positioned in an alcove behind a gilded rail. The other pavilion was probably the queen’s approached by its own staircase. The room on the front overlooking the road was the king’s presence chamber used for dining in state.
Samwell’s building incorporated a number of novelties. First there were a large number of corner fireplaces, a great rarity in England and the first in a royal palace. Then the king’s lodgings had an early type of counter-balanced sliding sash window, probably the first to be installed in England. The main range also incorporated an octagonal room with niches, possibly a dining room or closet.
Samwell’s new wing was only part of the house as the old Jacobean building on the site was retained for members of the King’s family and household. An accommodation list dating from 1674 tells us that in all there were 124 rooms and of these 23 were the king’s own.
Although Samwell’s building was technologically and architecturally original its overall effect was less than impressive to contemporaries. Cosimo de Medici who visited soon after the new buildings were completed thought that it ‘did not deserve to be called a king’s residence’ and John Evelyn thought it the buildings the ‘most improper imaginable for an house of Sport and Pleasure’. Despite these remarks Charles II liked the buildings and spent much time there in the 1670s.
John Evelyn spent the night at Newmarket in October 1671 and found ‘the jolly blades racing, dancing, feasting and revelling, more resembling a luxurious and abandoned rout than a Christian Court’. Yet not all was pleasure. The fact that Samwell was commissioned to build a formal royal bedroom complete with bed rail shows that Charles intended to use the house for formal levees and receptions. We know that the king received ambassadors at Newmarket, and undertook other ceremonial duties.
On 22 March 1683 a fire broke out in one of the stables near the market place. That night a strong wind was blowing and soon 66 houses were ablaze. In all nearly £20,000 worth of damage was done to the town. As the fire raged the king moved out of his house to avoid the smoke and left the smouldering town a few days later for London. The fire, the dirt, the lack of accommodation all contributed to the king falling out of love with Newmarket. During the last part of his reign his attentions turned elsewhere, especially to the idea of building a new palace at Winchester. Newmarket was now granted to courtiers as a grace and favour residence.
The house was, in fact, retained by the Crown until 1819 when it was sold and most of it demolished. Today one pavilion survives. It contains Charles II’s bedroom and one of William Samwell’s revolutionary sash windows. Its soft red brick, neatly gauged window heads and stone sills are the remains of a building of real quality.
This building is now the National Museum of Horseracing, one of the best and most interesting regional museums in England and well worth a visit to understand a little about the sporting life of the Stuart court.