Druids Lodge

The Druids Lodge Confederacy… Also known as The Netheravon Confederacy and sometimes referred to as The Hermits of Salisbury Plain.

Druids Lodge is tucked away in the heart of the Wiltshire Downs, at Middle Woodford, near Amesbury, and eight miles from Netheravon in one of the loneliest parts of Salisbury Plain. The stable was little known to the outer world until the first dozen years of the last century, when the “Druids Lodge Confederacy" got to work, and made Druids Lodge the terror of the bookmakers.

Jack Fallon, an Irishman, was installed as trainer for as shrewd a collection of owners as have ever gathered in a stable. One was Captain Frank Forester, a wealthy man, who was connected with the now extinct dukedom of Cleveland the first Duchess was the famous Barbara Villiers, who bore a son to Charles II. Others were Captain William Bagwell Purefoy, Edward A. Wigan and Holmer Peard all of whom were Irishmen, and finally A. P. Cunliffe. To complete the Irish flavour their jockey in most of the successful enterprises was Bernard Dillon.

Their huge coups soon became the talk of the racing world, and their deeds were invested with mystery and speculation. What was certain was that the happenings at this remote spot were never allowed to leak out. Because of Druids Lodge's isolation, strangers were rare, and if one did become inquisitive he was spotted instantly. Stable lads were forbidden to place bets except through Fallon, or even to mention horses in their letters home.

Presiding geniuses of the group were Cunliffe, with his cold, clear brain, and Purefoy. Another extremely clever member was Peard, a noted veterinary surgeon. He it was who gave advice about the many horses bought in Ireland, and which were developed on the Druids Lodge gallops. Captain Forester, too, knew much about the Irish scene, for before taking up residence near Druids Lodge he had been master of foxhounds in Ireland and was steeped in horses.

Jack Fallon, if not a training wizard, was very competent indeed. So was Tom Lewis, who succeeded him in 1906. The practice of this clever coterie was to buy for small sums at the sales or out of selling plates horses that had little form, build up their real capabilities on the Druids Lodge gallops, and then get them into handicaps at weights that made them betting propositions.

Naturally such a procedure demanded great judgment of horses. An outstanding example was Hackler's Pride, whose victory in the 1903 Cambridgeshire first brought the “Confederacy" into the public eye. Hackler's Pride, bred in County Limerick, was by Hackler out of Comma, the latter a mare so moderate that she was not good enough to win a Hunt Cup race for horses that followed the Eglinton Hounds. When, sold originally at Ballsbridge, Hackler's Pride fetched only 75 guineas, she ran second in a juvenile plate at the Curragh and in her only other race in Ireland was unplaced in a nursery at Cork Park. She was then resold for a small sum and sent to Fallon in England. The money was recovered quickly and with interest, for she won the £1,000 Chesterfield Nursery at Derby. A second in the £1,000 Whitsuntide Plate at Hurst Park as a three-year-old provided the stable with a further line to her usefulness, and after failures in the Wokingham and Stewards' Cup she was entered for the Cambridgeshire, being allotted 7st. 1lb.

Fallon soon found they had something to bet on, and told Purefoy that he had 10lb in hand. "Not enough" said Purefoy. “When you've allowed for a further 7lb in case of accidents we'll start betting." Fallon was able to give the assurance, and, immediately the ante-post books opened, commission agents all over the country got busy. It is estimated that on this Cambridgeshire the layers stood to lose about £50,000 before the wider public became even aware that the horse was fancied. More and more bets were placed, and in subsequent years it emerged that the Confederacy had cleaned up £100,000 in all… a sum which is in excess of £9.5million in today’s money. Jack Jarvis, then an apprentice, claimed the 5 lb. and rode Hackler's Pride at 6st 10 lb. She won almost as she liked, the margin being three lengths. She had two defeats as a four-year-old, and was entered in the Cambridgeshire again. This time she was placed on the 8st 10lb mark. The stable went for another fortune, and pulled it off, but only by a neck. It is estimated that on this occasion the bookmakers parted with about £80,000... Which is just over £7.5million in today’s money!

Not content with this dual victory by Hackler's Pride, the clever men at Druids Lodge actually did the same in another handicap in the same two years. They bought Ypsilanti out of a seller, and Fallon developed him into a top-class handicapper. With plans laid in the same careful and silent manner, they took many thousands from the bookmakers when Ypsilanti won the 1903 Kempton "Jubilee” with 8st 1lb The following year the handicapper allotted what he considered a safe burden, 9st 5lb, but the stable knew differently and they again cleaned up a huge sum, when Ypsilanti beat Cerisier, who was carrying only 5st 10lb.

To win two Cambridgeshire’s with one horse, and two Jubilees with another in the same successive years must be unique. But it was not the last time the Confederacy were to double a big handicap. The shrewd Mr. Peard picked up in Ireland a half-brother to the Grand National winner Eremon, a colt by Vitez out of Daisy named Christmas Daisy. As a two-year-old he ran three times in Ireland without winning, and won one of his three races the following season, after an “unplaced” at Liverpool he was sent to Fallon.

As a four-year-old he had five outings before the 1909 Cambridgeshire, winning just once in the Peveril of the Peak Handicap at Derby, carrying 7st. Given only 7st 2lb in the Cambridgeshire he romped home by five lengths. Needless to say the Druids Lodge bank balances swelled again. And they did so the following year when, with 8st 2lb, Christmas Daisy scored in the Cambridgeshire once more.

Season 1904 was a remarkable one for them, for they had started by pulling off the Lincoln Handicap with Uninsured, medium of a big gamble. For a long time the stable could hardly do wrong as countless handicap triumphs came their way. They had a go at the 1906 Derby, but their coup here, with Lally, came unstuck. They got their money back, however, when Lally won the Royal Hunt Cup the following year. If you wish to evaluate the extent of the confederacy’s cat and mouse games with the bookmakers just try working out how a horse gets beaten in a minor apprentice race at Lingfield and is subsequently gambled on to win the Epsom Derby, and goes on the following season to win the Royal Hunt Cup and the Eclipse Stakes! A Derby did come the way of the stable when Cunliffe's horse Aboyeur was given the race on the disqualification of Craganour in 1913. The 1914-18 war broke up the Confederacy, and ended the bookmakers' nightmare.

There was actually a book written about Druids Lodge… “The Druid's Lodge Confederacy - The Gamblers Who Made Racing Pay” by Paul Mathieu. From which the following is a good summary to gain a further insight into the members of the Confederacy.

“The Confederacy was an eclectic bunch. It was headed by Percy Cunliffe, an Old Etonian gold speculator who weighed in at more than twenty stones and 'was not a man much given to smiling'. The man responsible for 'planking' the money down was Wilfred Bagwell Purefoy. Called 'Pure' by his friends, he collected rare orchids, invested heavily in music hall, bred racehorses and was a director of the Autostrop Safety Razor Company, a competitor of Gillette. The funds were fronted by Captain Frank Forester, a dedicated huntsman who was 'a rather terrifying man in the early stages of a run'. And Edward Wigan, a small, extremely uncommunicative man, with a fondness for milk puddings, who pronounced the word coup as 'cowp'. Another Old Etonian, he was criticised by one of his masters for 'only paying enough attention to turn what I've said into a Spoonerism'. The quintet was made up by the Irish vet Holmer Peard, who bought Sceptre and The Tetrarch and oversaw the trials that the Confederacy ran at their stables at Salisbury Plain.

The planning behind Hackler's Pride's initial campaign was meticulous. After one early impressive run at Hurst Park she was, writes Mathieu, 'run neither openly nor very honestly'. To confuse the bookmakers further, the Confederacy indulged in a pea-and-thimble game by entering three other horses in the Cambridgeshire. This was so successful that when the London clubs started offering odds, Hackler's Pride was available at 25-1. To say Pure took advantage is an understatement. Employing contacts as various as a Birmingham New Street station-master, a dentist in Woking and a priest, they piled the money down. She started at 9-2 favourite. The race was a formality. 'Almost from the fall of the flag it was a one-horse race. The judge gave it as three lengths. It might have been 33,' was the verdict in the Sporting Luck.

The next year they repeated the dose. Hackler's Pride ran unconvincingly, they played the pea-and-thimble game and then backed Pride down from 100-7 to 7-2 joint favourite. This time it was a closer run thing as the horse won by a neck. Before the race, a stable lad had approached Cunliffe to tell him he had dreamed that Hackler's Pride had won. Cunliffe, unsurprised, replied: 'Indeed. What were second and third?'”

Some strange ups and downs are produced on the Turf… How many thousands of pounds the trainer Jack Fallon himself made is not known, but he must have been a very rich man at the height of his success. It is said that on the first victory alone of Hackler's Pride he cleared £30,000... As a matter of interest £30,000 as a sum of money in the year 1903 calculates to a value in today’s money as an incredible £2.9million. Yet when he died in a London hospital in 1936 he was penniless, and had fallen so far that a short time before his death a fund had been organised on his behalf.

Leaving the confederacy aside it wouldn’t be hard to write a book about Bernard Dillon alone, a quite brilliant jockey whose career was finished by the age of 25 with the withdrawal of his Jockey’s licence. Dillon had a tempestuous relationship with Marie Lloyd a well known music hall singer 18 years his senior. He was born in Tralee, Ireland and came over to ride for the Druid's Lodge stable of Jack Fallon at the age of 14. His elder brother Joe was already apprenticed at the stables. It obviously suited the Confederates to employ unknowns such as the Dillon’s, rather than established jockeys whose form was already recognised. Bernard's first coup for them was with Ypsilanti in the Kempton Park Jubilee Handicap which netted the confederates today’s equivalent of many millions of pounds. The following year, his win of the Cambridgeshire on Hackler's Pride was another great success for them. After leaving Druid's Lodge, Dillon had a few years at the top of his profession, during which he won the 1000 Guineas twice and the Derby, and rode Pretty Polly to her last four victories. His Classic wins came for outside stables and one year after his Derby success he hung up his boots, having been warned off by the Jockey Club for betting. Dillon was the third husband of the music hall performer Marie Lloyd, who could match her husband's ability to spend money; when she died in 1922 the couple were living in a house provided by her sisters. Dillon died in 1941 at the age of 54, having become a night porter at South Africa House in Trafalgar Square.

In the early part of the 20th century Druids Lodge was famous for successful betting coups with Purefoy, Forrester, Cunliffe, Peard, and Wigan employing Jack Fallon to merely execute the owner's instructions. In 1934 James Voase Rank of the flour milling company known in more recent times as "Rank Hovis McDougall" who was the brother of Joseph Arthur Rank the film magnate purchased the land and stables and installed Noel Cannon as his private trainer. And what of Druids Lodge today? It's no longer a racing stable but now a Polo Club.