Article by Chris Pitt
Patrick Joseph Butler was born in 1949, the eldest of a seven-child family at Castletownroach, Co. Cork, that town also being the birthplace of Jonjo O’Neill, who went to the same local secondary school.
Paddy’s parents, Eugene and Kitty, managed a farm where Paddy earned a living for a short period after leaving school. His starting point with horses was with three-day eventer Captain Freeman-Jackson at Mallow where Paddy groomed hunters. He then joined thoroughbred trainer Jimmy O’Flynn.
He made his first racecourse appearance on Golden Gripper in a maiden hurdle at Clonmel – still referred to as Powerstown Park at the time – on October 8, 1970, finishing unplaced.
Paddy later switched to Tom Bergin in Co. Kilkenny, who ran a stable that developed the careers of several top performers including Captain Christy and Artifice. The wages were poor so Paddy began to think about trying his luck in England. He spent £13 of his final week’s wage of £18 on a one-way plane ticket from Cork to Birmingham, and arrived with just the fiver left in his pocket.
He headed for Lambourn as he’d heard it was a good place for jumpers. Luckily for him, he happened to knock on the door of trainer Pat Haslem’s parents, who invited him in for a cup of tea, cooked him a meal, then put him up on a bunk-bed in their sitting room where he slept for the next four weeks.
He tried phoning Fulke Walwyn but ended up speaking to Peter Walwyn by mistake as, somehow, he’d mixed their numbers up. Peter Walwyn offered him a job as a stable lad at Seven Barrows. Paddy soon realised that he’d joined a Flat yard rather than a National Hunt, but he decided to stay put because there was decent hostel accommodation and there was the opportunity to learn from very notable employees such as Ray Laing, Matt McCormack and Alan Bailey.
After a year of working with Flat horses, Paddy decided he still wanted to try his luck over jumps. A
chance cropped up when he was offered a job by Mrs Louie Dingwall at Sandbanks, near Poole. He rode his first winner on Brass Monkeys in division two of the Newton Abbot Challenge Cup Novices’ Hurdle on May 24, 1973.
He rode two more winners for Mrs Dingwall the following season – Pav Aureole at Leicester on November 20, 1973, and Camp Carson, below, at Fontwell on April 22, 1974, but rode none the next season and just one the season after that.
In the mid-1970s Paddy joined veteran Surrey trainer Jack O’Donoghue at Reigate as a “general dogsbody”. He then had a short-lived, unsuccessful training venture near Redruth, in Cornwall, but soon afterwards rented a small stable at East Chiltington, near Lewes, comprising 19 boxes and 14 acres of paddocks. He was able to exercise his horses on the old Lewes racecourse. He has been there ever since.
Paddy combined riding with training for a time and finished up with a career total of six wins, the last being on Mr Linnet, whom he also trained, at Fontwell on December 3, 1980.
Today, Paddy continues to train at Homewood Gate Racing Stables, East Chiltington, where his string now numbers just over a dozen.
Paddy, who is an excellent piano player, married Eileen on July 31, 1975. They have two children, Pamela & Robert.
