BURGHLEY HORSE TRIALS

Burghley Horse Trials is four days of eventing in early September in the park of Burghley House, outside Stamford: dressage on the Thursday and Friday, the cross-country on the Saturday over more than four miles and some thirty fences, and the jumping on the Sunday, for an average of eighty riders and more than a hundred and seventy-three thousand people. It is one of seven CCI5* events in the world and one of the three legs of the Grand Slam of Eventing.

It came to Burghley in 1961 “by accident rather than design”, when foot and mouth was suspected at Harewood and the Marquess of Exeter offered the British Horse Society his park instead.

The Marquess's Park

The house was built between 1555 and 1587 for Sir William Cecil, later the first Baron Burghley, Lord High Treasurer to Elizabeth I. Capability Brown laid out the park’s avenues from 1755, made a lake of twenty-six acres from a pond of nine between 1775 and 1780, and designed the Lion Bridge in 1778, for a thousand guineas. Since 1961 the house has been owned by a charitable trust set up by the family.

The sixth Marquess, David Cecil, was an Olympic champion in athletics, a member of the International Olympic Committee and a keen horseman. The first event had nineteen competitors and twelve thousand watching, and Anneli Drummond-Hay won it on Merely-A-Monarch. In its second year Burghley ran the European Championship. It has since held two World Championships, in 1966 and 1974, six European Championships and the Young Riders’ Europeans of 1978. “No other horse trials site has staged as many Championships.”

Princess Anne won in 1971 as European Champion, and Mark Phillips in 1973; he went on to design the course. Their daughter, Zara Tindall, is the only child of two former winners to ride there. William Fox-Pitt has won it six times. Andrew Nicholson won it on Avebury in 2012, 2013 and 2014, the only three in a row. In 2003 Pippa Funnell became the first rider to win the Grand Slam of Eventing, at Kentucky, Badminton and Burghley, and no one did it again until Michael Jung in 2016.

It was not held in 2020 or 2021.

Four Miles

It begins on the Wednesday afternoon with the first horse inspection, the trot up, at four o’clock, when the horses are “presented to the Ground Jury by their stylishly dressed riders”. Fifty guests take tea and Pol Roger beforehand, hear Captain Mark Phillips on the cross-country, and walk the course.

Dressage fills the Thursday and Friday. On the Saturday the gates open at half past seven, the Shetland Pony Grand National is run at ten, and the cross-country starts at half past eleven. Derek di Grazia has designed it since 2022. In 2026 it ran 6,455 metres over twenty-eight numbered fences, in an optimum time of eleven minutes and twenty seconds: under the Lion Bridge early on, up to the Dairy Mound and down Winners’ Avenue, with fences named Capability’s Lakeside Brush, the Cottesmore Leap, the Trout Hatchery and the Leaf Pit. The Avebury Trophy goes to the best round.

On the Sunday the horses are inspected again at nine, and the jumping is in two sessions, the top twenty in the afternoon. The arena is in a listed park, and its slopes and ridges cannot be levelled, so some fences are met on a slope. Eventing began as “The Military”, a competition for serving officers. The Parade of Hounds comes before the prize-giving.

In 2026, from 3 to 6 September, Gemma Stevens won on Chilli Knight, clear and on her dressage score, by 13.4 penalties, the widest margin since Blyth Tait in 1998, and took £120,000 and the trophy from the Princess Royal. “This represents 25 years of work and finally I have managed to win a ‘big B’.” Ballaghmor Class, twice the winner, was retired in the arena that Sunday.

What to Know

It runs from a Thursday to a Sunday in early September, with the trot up on the Wednesday: in 2027, from 2 to 5 September. The box office opens early in 2027.

In 2026 a day’s admission cost £30 to £37, and £52 to £59 on the Saturday. Membership, for two people on all four days, brings priority parking, the Members’ Enclosure and the dressage, and cost £385 to £425. Grandstand seats are sold apart. The Members’ Restaurant and the Avebury Restaurant serve lunch.

Country attire: a tweed jacket, a tie, and boots that will walk the course. Nothing is published; the park wears tweed and wax, and dresses a little smarter on the Sunday.

Trains run to Stamford from Peterborough, Leicester and Birmingham, and the park is a walk of twenty to thirty minutes from the station; helicopters land by arrangement with the Horse Trials Office. The house closes for the Trials. Stay at the George in Stamford, rebuilt in 1597 by Lord Burghley and “reckoned one of the greatest Inns in England” by Defoe in 1724.

The mistake is to keep to the usual timing on the Saturday. The Trials advise an extra hour for the last ten miles of the journey.

The Court

Burghley Horse Trials is not the Court’s own. Membership, with the Members’ Enclosure, and places at the trot up are sought on a member’s behalf, and the Court arranges the whole of it: getting there, where to stay in Stamford, and the table afterward. The Court goes on to Calgary the week after for the Spruce Meadows Masters.

How one becomes a member is set out under Admission.