Banstead Manor the house of dreams for 15-year-old Winston

Banstead Manor, four miles south-east of Newmarket in Suffolk, is today renowned across the racing world as the centre of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s racing empire, and as such the home of Frankel, Britain’s most famous living racehorse and now most sought-after stallion.

It has another claim to fame. It is where the young Winston Churchill had some of the best times of his life, both in and out of the saddle. The ride up from there through Cheveley, then along the Ashtead Road back towards Newmarket, before hacking across the open turf to watch the horses working on Warren Hill, and then over the Bury Road on to the legendary Limekilns gallop, is one to lift the heart.

Think of the thrill it must have given Churchill when he did it for the first time with his father in the summer of 1890. Banstead Manor had become the house of dreams.