Philip Fielden (Major)

1919 - 1998

Major Philip Fielden served with the Royals and rode in three Grand Military Gold Cups, winning twice, in 1953 and 1955, both times on horses he also owned. They were trained by Cyril Mitchell at Epsom.

Philip Brand Fielden was born at Kineton, Warwickshire on April 2, 1919. He went to school at Eton and then studied at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he rode, was elected to the Bullingdon Club, and, in the long vacation of 1938, learnt German with the families of Lehndorff and Stein of Steinort in eastern Prussia.

He enlisted at the age of 20 and in 1940 joined the Royal Dragoon Guards in Palestine. Soon after, the Royals were converted to an armoured car division. After a short preparation in Cairo, they drove out into the Western Desert in June 1941.

He was awarded the Military Cross in 1942. However, on May 29 that same year his armoured vehicle took a direct hit in the petrol tanks below his feet, which led to a concealed injury from which he was later to suffer years of pain, ill-health and depression.

He was back with his squadron for the breakthrough after El Alamein and on to the cessation of hostilities in North Africa in May 1943. Thereafter he served in Italy, and, in June 1944, landed in Normandy before going to Staff College in 1945.

After serving in the Far East, and then in Cairo, Major Fielden was posted to Berlin in 1947. His subsequent service in the British Zone was lightened by race meetings and horse shows.

In 1952 he decided to look for a horse which he could ride in the Grand Military Gold Cup and had the good fortune to run into Major Charles Radclyffe, who purchased Atom Bomb for him from David Gibson. Atom Bomb duly won the race in 1953. Only four horses took part that year, Atom Bomb winning by three lengths. As Major Fielden later wrote: “in truth, the 1953 race was the nadir of the Grand Military; never within memory had there been such a small and undistinguished field.”

The following year Major Fielden was third on Roughen, but in 1955 he won the race for a second time on Skatealong. Both horses had been bought in Ireland by Major Radclyffe, who hunted them with the Heythrop before sending them to be trained, like Atom Bomb, by Cyril Mitchell. Major Fielden subsequently sold Skatealong, who went on to complete the course in the 1960 Grand National.

As Tom Nickalls wrote in Sporting Life, Major Fielden was “a most capable horseman”. He enjoyed a fourth Grand Military Gold Cup success in 1958 with Golden Drop which he owned in partnership with Captain Simon Bradish-Ellames. However, on this occasion, the horse was ridden by Nick Upton.

From January 1959 until July 1961 he returned to BAOR in Germany to command his regiment, the Royals. The Royals were subsequently posted from Germany to Aden, and on to Malaya under his command.

When Major Fielden retired from the Army, Brigadier Roscoe Harvey suggested he might become a stewards’ secretary for the Jockey Club, a post which the carried out from 1962 until 1972.

His memoirs, ‘Swings and Roundabouts’, were published in 1991.

Major Fielden died at his home at Adlestrop in December 1998, aged 79. He was survived by his wife, Caroline, whom he had married in 1955.