The Earls of Sefton owned the land on which the Grand National was run until 1949, when the 7th Earl sold it to the Topham family. The preceding Earls feature in John Pinfold’s Aintree history books. For our purposes suffice to say the 7th Earl had served with the Royal Horse Guards, and had been a Gentleman in Waiting to Edward VIII. He owned racehorses – his best, Medoc II, won the 1942 Cheltenham Gold Cup – and he was a member of the Jockey Club. He watched them run as often as possible and was loyal to his jockeys, but occasional displays of apparent arrogance meant he was admired more than liked. He died in 1972.
NEWMARKET
The 7th Earl of Sefton had been the instigator of the round course that was grafted onto the Rowley Mile in 1959, so that races from 1m2f-2m could be viewed in their entirety from the stands without much difficulty. Like its namesake, the Sefton Course was never popular and was discontinued soon after the Earl’s death. Instead he was commemorated with the Earl of Sefton Stakes in 1973, a nine furlong race at the Craven meeting. It was a new race in 1971, the Rubbing House Stakes, but that title only lasted two years. The Earl of Sefton Stakes is still going strong. Henry Cecil won it on seven occasions spanning 30 years.
AINTREE
There used to be a race of the same name on the flat at Aintree for three-year-olds. The Earl of Sefton’s Plate, worth £500, began in 1903. It dropped the apostrophe s after WW2. In 1968 Red Rum finished second in it, conceding 18 pounds to the winner. In 1973 it was the anticlimactic contest that had to follow Red Rum and Crisp’s Grand National. It was last run in 1975. The final flat races at Aintree were a year later, when four races were run on the Thursday of the Grand National meeting.
The Earl of Sefton Stakes was also an important event in the coursing calendar. The 2nd Earl founded it in 1836 at Altcar, on his Lancashire estate. It staged the premier coursing contest, the Waterloo Cup, until the sport was banned in 2005.
See also the entry for the Grand Sefton Chase at Aintree.
Other Sources:
An Aintree Dynasty, by John Pinfold, particularly pages 195-6
The Heath and the Horse (Oldrey/Cox/Nash) p206
Hardly A Jockey (John Hislop) p155