The following two-part article by journalist Andrew White, appeared in the Northern Echo on 21 November and 22 November 2020.
Bill Blenkinsopp story, part one: ‘My dream to be a jockey’
In the first of a two-part feature, Andrew White speaks to Bill Blenkinsopp – a man with a remarkable story.
“I’ve wanted to be a jockey ever since I was ten years old. I’ve never wanted anything else.”
Bill Blenkinsopp is speaking from the front room of his home in the village where he was born, bred and still lives.
Now aged 72, Bill has been representing Aycliffe Village on Great Aycliffe Town Council for more than 30 years and is a well-known figure in County Durham.
But far fewer people are aware of his sporting pedigree and the chain of events which could have taken his life in a very different direction, were it not for a terrible accident when he was aged just 18.
Young Bill was mad about horses and his fledgling ambitions to forge a career in the saddle were given a boost in 1966, thanks to an innovative careers scheme at Marlowe Hall School, in Newton Aycliffe.
The school found him a job as a stable lad with a renowned trainer in Newmarket – known as the headquarters of British racing.
An excited 16-year-old Bill got on a train at Darlington station to head off for his new life – but his new career was to get off to a stuttering start.
“I was supposed to go to (Harry) Thomson Jones in Newmarket,” says Bill.
“I was supposed to be met off the train at King’s Cross in London, but he didn’t turn up.
“So I found out where the Newmarket train was and caught that. I got off at Newmarket and there was nobody there either. So I found out where Thomson Jones's stables were and went there.”
He bowled into the office at Newmarket, where the secretary told a bemused Bill he was in the wrong place.
He was supposed to be linking up with Geoffrey Brooke, who used the same secretary as Jones – which explained the initial mix-up.
Although now in the right place, a homesick Bill was unable to settle.
“It was my first job; I was a long way from home and the northern lads weren’t liked by the southern lads. I was there for six weeks and I didn’t like it one bit.”
Bill's misery was ended when the stable’s blacksmith found him a job at Ernie Davey’s yard in Malton, North Yorkshire.
But his career stalled yet again when Ernie retired. His son Paul took over the yard, but was soon offered a lucrative job in Newmarket.
Paul Davey went on to forge a highly successful career – but young Bill was out of a job again.
He returned home to Aycliffe Village, but he caught another break when jockey’s valet Arnie Robinson found him another job.
This time Bill was off to Richmond, North Yorkshire, as apprentice jockey to trainer George Oscar Fenningworth – known ubiquitously and affectionately as ‘Buster'.
Buster Fenningworth was an established trainer, the 'master' of Bell Isle and Hurgill Lodge stables at Richmond.
He knew the racing game inside out, having started as an amateur rider in 1936, before turning professional. He started his training career in Kirk Yetholm, near the Scottish Border, in 1951 and took over the string of his father-in-law, Harry Peacock, at Richmond, when Peacock retired at the end of 1961.
Rarely seen on course without his good luck charm – a battered trilby hat – among his owners were the Marquess of Zetland, Lady Sassoon, Major Lionel Holliday and the film star James Stewart.
By 1966, Fenningworth boasted the largest string in the north, with 80 horses in his care and was looking forward to a successful season, Northern Despatch racing expert Jim Lynch describing his prospects as “very rosy indeed”.
Bill had finally landed on his feet with a respected and well-liked trainer, who believed in giving young lads a chance.
“Good lads can make horses,” Fenningworth told The Northern Despatch's Max Presnell in 1964.
“You begin a young lad on one of the older horses who has been through the routine to the extent that he can teach the rider.
“But mainly the youngster has to have the ability to absorb the experience gained in actual races and learn to follow riding instructions.”
Bill enjoyed working for Mr Fenningworth, “the Guv'nor”, who he describes as “hard, but fair”.
“After about six weeks, he came over and said 'get yourself changed, you’re riding at Catterick. It was my first race and I was only 16. I rode Painter's Boy and finished seventh, I think.
“Things went very well after that. I was getting ride after ride; I was being used quite a bit.”
He rode his first winner, Summer Pride, at Ayr in June 1966, prompting a letter of congratulations from the horse's Glasgow-based owner, Sandy Grant. (The race was the Belleisle Apprentice Handicap on Friday, June 17 – Summer Pride started the 6-4 favourite.)
Grant wrote: “I hope you will have many easy wins such as you had on Summer Pride.” And he enclosed a “little present” of £50 for Bill to start a bank book.
As well as becoming a promising jockey, Bill was also getting noticed in the boxing ring. He used to train at a gym in Catterick Garrison, to maintain his fitness and keep his weight down – he was riding at seven stones.
That year, the Stable Lads’ Boxing Association organised its first national championships, backed by the powerful Anglo-American Sporting Club – and Bill saw his chance.
“The trainer asked if there was anybody in the stable who was interested and I put my hand up straight away,” he says.
“The semi-finals were at Catterick Garrison, where I fought a lad called Billy McCaskill and I beat him.
“That put me through to the finals, which were held at the Hilton Hotel in London.”
The finals were a swanky affair, with high-profile guests from the world of racing and a posh dinner where comedian Charlie Drake was the guest of honour.
Bill was fighting in the final of the seven stone division – and he wasn’t short of confidence.
“I expected to win,” he says.
“I was pretty good mind. My brother Jim was a good trainer, because he used to give you one if you dropped your guard. He kept me on my toes.”
And win he did – “easily”, he says, against his Welsh opponent.
There was a magnificent trophy for the winner, but because Bill’s opponent had lost his brother in the Aberfan coal mining disaster a few weeks earlier, the organisers presented it to him as a gesture.
“I didn’t mind,” says Bill, who was instead presented with a replica which he still has to this day.
Bill’s success in the ring was so impressive that he was approached by the manager of the Scottish boxer Walter McGowan, the world flyweight champion who also held the British and Commonwealth titles.
“He said he had just watched me and asked if I would like to turn professional afterwards,"” says Bill.
“But I didn’t want to know. All I was interested in was horse racing, it was my life and always had been.”
So Bill returned to his day job at Richmond, where his career appeared to be on an upward trajectory.
He had some high-profile rides for Mr Fenningworth, he was looking forward to defending his stable lads’ boxing title and everything was looking ‘very rosy’.
But everything changed for Bill on Saturday, April 22, 1967, when he was involved in a horrific accident.
Bill Blenkinsopp story, part two: 'How I got out of it, I’ll never know.'
The second instalment of the Bill Blenkinsopp story begins with the accident on the way to the races which almost claimed his life.
“This is why I’ll always have money,” says Bill Blenkinsopp, handing me a small, brown envelope.
At first I can’t see anything, but then something catches my eye.
I take it out of the envelope, but I still can’t quite work out what I’m looking at.
“It’s a pound note,” says Bill, 72, who lives in Aycliffe Village.
And so it is. Folded and charred, but unmistakably a pound note.
Apart from himself, it’s the only thing remaining from a horrific car accident more than five decades ago which killed a man and left two others fighting for their lives – and Bill keeps it to remind him of the day that changed his life forever.
Yesterday’s Memories told the story of Bill’s early years as a jockey.
After a stuttering start to the career he had always dreamed of, the then 17-year-old Bill had landed a job as an apprentice with trainer Buster Fenningworth, master of Bell Isle and Hurgill Lodge stables in Richmond, North Yorkshire.
Everything appeared to be going in the right direction for Bill. He was getting plenty of rides and had landed his first winner. And he had a sideline as an amateur boxer, winning the national Stable Lads’ Association Boxing title in the seven stone weight division.
But all that changed on Saturday, April 22, 1967.
Bill was travelling to Ayr races with Mr Fenningworth and stable jockey Albert ‘Brig’ Robson.
It was a big day for Bill as he had been due to ride the red-hot favourite, Aldburg, in a £1,000 race – and he was supremely confident of riding the winner.
But as their car reached Ecclefechan, a small village near Dumfries in the south of Scotland, disaster struck.
Fenningworth, who was driving the Aston Martin, lost control. The car ploughed through a crash barrier, plunged 20ft down an embankment and burst into flames.
“It just kept rolling and rolling and then it exploded,” recalls Bill.
“How I got out of it, I’ll never know.”
Driver Fenningworth and front seat passenger Robson were thrown from the vehicle, but Bill remained in the wreck.
All three were transferred to Dumfries Hospital, but Fenningworth was so badly injured he died en route.
Both Blenkinsopp and Robson, 25, were described as “very critical”.
Bill was not expected to survive. He suffered 68% first-degree burns and was given two hours to live “at most”.
Newspaper reports in the days that followed reported on his progress, but while Robson was improving, there continued to be “no change” in Bill’s condition and his prognosis looked bleak.
Fenningworth’s wife Barbara, despite her own grief, sent a letter to Bill’s mother which read: “You have my deepest sympathy at this time.”
But Bill didn’t die and gradually – very gradually – he improved.
His recovery was slow and painful, especially the series of painful skin grafts he had to endure every two weeks.
“I had to just grin and bear it,” he says, stoically
His burns were so extensive, that the only ‘live’ skin he had was a small square at the base of his collar and below his right eye.
Surgeons had to turn to his brothers – Jim, Edwin and Peter – for healthy skin to graft onto his wounds.
In hospital, Bill’s weight had plummeted to 2st 8lbs. It was eight weeks before he was allowed to see himself in a mirror. He had to learn to walk again and it was 18 months before he could hold a cup.
One memory from his recovery which has stuck with Bill is the day he received an unexpected visit.
He was at home in Aycliffe Village when a large car pulled up.
“It was a Rolls Royce,” says Bill. “The village had never seen a Rolls Royce before.”
There was a knock on the door and the visitor identified himself as Wilf Sherman, of Sherman’s Football Pools, and also a representative of the Anglo-American Sporting Club, the powerful sponsors of the Stable Lads’ Boxing Association boxing championships he had won the year before.
“He came to invite me and my brother down to present the cup I had won the year before to the new champion,” says Bill.
His injuries meant he was unable to attend, but it was an act of kindness Bill would never forget. And it was the first of many.
At the boxing championships that year, a bookmaker named Tommy Marshall, who had presented him with the cup the previous year, got together with other bookmakers from Scotland and the North to open a fund for Bill, presenting him with a cheque for £215 before Christmas.
Northern jockeys opened another fund, raising £400. A golf match between sides representing Flat race jockeys and National Hunt jockeys was organised.
Perhaps most remarkably, Yorkshire wicketkeeper Jimmy Binks helped to arrange a charity cricket match between a Yorkshire XI and a team of northern racing personalities.
The game attracted several well-known personalities, including Leeds United footballer Jack Charlton.
Incredibly, the crowd of 1,400 saw Big Jack bowl out Geoffrey Boycott and another Yorkshire cricketer. Peter Chadwick, in the same over.
Bill knew nothing of this, as he lay desperately ill and sedated in his hospital bed.
But as he gradually recovered, he harboured dreams of returning to the saddle, or at least returning to horseracing in some capacity.
Doctors severed the tendons of his hands and stitched them together again in an effort to restore the use of his fingers and gradually Bill adapted to a new way of life.
He did stay connected to horseracing, including doing some work for trainer Denys Smith at Bishop Auckland, helping to saddle a horse named Foggy Bell which went onto win the Lincoln Handicap at Doncaster.
But he never fully realised his dreams of returning to the saddle as a professional jockey and says he is still “gutted” to this day he was unable to go back to that life.
Despite the loss of his chosen career and the injuries he suffered, Bill still has a lot to be grateful for and has a special word for the NHS professionals who saved his life all those years ago.
He says there were two doctors who attended him after he was first taken off the ambulance in Dumfries.
On seeing the extent of his injuries, one thought the best course of action was to amputate both of his legs.
But the other disagreed, arguing they could open his legs and let the fluid run off. Thankfully for Bill, this second view prevailed and he has nothing but praise for the care and treatment he received.
“The NHS were, and still are, absolutely brilliant,” he says.
Bill still keeps hold of his memories of those days when he was a jockey – and a boxer.
He has the trophies he won – a little battered and bruised now – and a scrapbook full of press cuttings, photographs and letters.
And there is that pound note – expenses he was given to cover the costs of his day at Ayr races.
It was recovered from the back pocket of the jeans he was wearing that day, placed in an envelope stamped with the words “on police service” and handed to his mother.
He’s kept it safe ever since.
“It’s why I’ll always have money,” he says again, perhaps remembering what could have been.
