Qualla: National Horseracing Museum

National Horseracing Museum: Introduction

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Roger Cornfoot, CC BY-SA 2.0. Palace House in Newmarket is the only surviving piece of the palace that Charles II built here in the seventeenth century, when the Stuart court made this Suffolk market town one of the great centres of English royal life. The palace is mostly gone; the house remains. Today it contains the Fred Packard Museum and Galleries of British Sporting Art, where George Stubbs's equine portraits hang alongside work by Sir Alfred Munnings and Lucy Kemp-Welch — painters for whom the racehorse was not a subject but an obsession. This is the heart of the National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 2016, and it is one of the more unusual cultural destinations in England: a museum about sport, art, and animals, located in the ruins of a royal palace.

Image: Roger Cornfoot | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Horseracing Museum: From Jockey Club Rooms to Palace Street

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Lewis, CC BY-SA 2.0. The National Horseracing Museum's origins lie in a practical question: what to do with the Subscription Rooms of the Jockey Club when they closed in 1981. Jockey Club handicapper Major David Swannell saw an opportunity, and the museum opened on 30 April 1983, in the old rooms on ...

Image: Tony Lewis | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Horseracing Museum: Inside the Trainer's House

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Humphrey, CC BY-SA 2.0. The museum's collections are housed in the Trainer's House and the King's Yard Stables — buildings that retain the functional character of a working yard. The exhibits themselves range from fine painting to sporting memorabilia to the applied science of horse racing. Jockey silks...

Image: Richard Humphrey | CC BY-SA 2.0

National Horseracing Museum: The Rothschild Yard

Fri, 22 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David P Howard, CC BY-SA 2.0. Behind the public galleries, the Rothschild Yard serves a different purpose. It is home to Retraining of Racehorses, the charity that manages the transition of thoroughbreds from competitive racing into second careers. The yard provides stabling and paddocks for horses currently ...

Image: David P Howard | CC BY-SA 2.0