New tour will trace the life of legendary Newmarket jockey Fred Archer

A special new tour to mark the 150th anniversary of legendary jockey Fred Archer becoming champion jockey for the first time will be held in Newmarket next month.

And joining the journey round the town landmarks associated with Archer’s fascinating but tragically short life will be his great-granddaughter Diana Reynolds, author of Just One More Smile: Fred and Helen Archer’s Tragic Love Story,

Archer was a sporting phenomenon of Victorian England. His name became a synonym for success and although the story he was once found in tears because he could not ride both winners in a dead heat may be apocryphal, it illustrates the attitude he had to his profession and his obsessional ruthless desire that every ride he had would be a winning one.

Hugely successful, he rode nearly 3,000 winners between 1870 and 1886 and was champion jockey for 13 successive years.

In 1885 he rioe 246 winners – a feat not equalled until 1933.

He was born in Cheltenham but those on the tour will hear he came to Newmarket when he was just 11 and made the town his home.

His private life was fascinating and the among the landmarks the tour will take in will be All Saints Church, where Fred married his sweetheart Helen ‘Nellie’ Dawson in 1883, only to lose her the following year when she died after giving birth to their second child, a girl who was named after her mother.

Fred never got over the loss and three years later took his own life in the palatial surroundings of Falmouth House, the mansion he had built in Snailwell Road and had hoped he and Nellie would share with their family for the rest of their lives.

Tickets for the Fred Archer Tour, on September 4, cost £120 per person and are bookable through Discover Newmarket (discovernewmarket.co.uk 01638 501122), the town’s official tourism service.