'You always dream of breeding a good horse like The New Lion - it's just a great shame Robert isn't here to see it'

It is three years since Little Lodge Farm lost one of its foundations and a singular figure in the world of British National Hunt breeding.

The late Robert Chugg, a gregarious, charismatic and wise-cracking former top-class amateur rider, left a mark on nearly everyone who met him.

So much must have changed in this small corner of Worcestershire, and yet so little, as Little Lodge continues to run like clockwork under the authority of Chugg’s widow, Jackie, just as it has for almost half a century.