Sandown’s Henry II Stakes was taken over from Hurst Park, where it had been called the Winston Churchill Stakes. The renamed race was first run at the Esher course in June 1963. The runner-up then, Twilight Alley, went on to win the Ascot Gold Cup. Gaul, the winner at Sandown, was unplaced.
Double Trigger (twice) and Persian Punch (thrice) are among the most renowned winners of the race. They had a virtual monopoly of it between 1995-2000, when only one other horse won. The race has fluctuated between Group 2 and 3 status and produced several Gold Cup winners, but only one since 2004; that was Big Orange in 2017. The race is one of the features of Sandown’s good evening meeting near the end of May.
Henry II reigned from 1154-89 and was an empire-builder in the old-fashioned sense of the phrase. At various points in his reign he controlled large chunks of France, but his ruthless outlook made him many enemies. It was he who wanted to be rid of the “turbulent priest” Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury.
Henry founded the Sandon Priory near modern-day Esher in Surrey. The monks, Augustinians, provided care for the sick and alms for the poor until 1349, when they were wiped out by the Black Death. The land eventually became Sandon Farm, until the 1870s when Hwfa Williams (qv) realised it would be an excellent site for a racecourse.
Legend has it that some of the stones from the abandoned Sandon Priory were used to construct the Travellers’ Rest on the Portsmouth Road at the southernmost tip of the racecourse’s grounds. This is a craggy stone shelter-cum-grotto built in the 1730s by the Pelham family that occupied Esher Palace (qv) at the time.