AT a time when historic British horse trials are falling by the wayside, there is something special about an event that has lasted 50 years to date. Bramham was founded by George Lane Fox, who envisaged putting on an event that would become “the Burghley of the north” in the grounds of his home, Bramham Park, near Wetherby. There had been a major horse trials in Yorkshire at Harewood House, but that had ceased to run after 1959. When George left the Army in 1971, he took the initiative.
His son, Nick Lane Fox, says: “When Harewood finished, the British Horse Society [which ran the sport in those days] rushed around looking for a new site. They had looked at Bramham, but my grandparents decided against it – and so they found Burghley instead. So the idea was there. My father was a keen hunting man and did lots of team chasing and so on in the Army, and my mother was
