By John Berry
Banstead Manor Stud is famed around the world as the HQ of Juddmonte, not least for housing the mighty Frankel. However, its incarnation as the home of the Juddmonte sires does not represent its debut as a source of racing success. During 2025 it will celebrate its centenary as a leading stud because it was first thrust into the spotlight in 1925 when Henry Morriss bought the property specifically to stand that year's Derby winner Manna.
Previously Banstead Manor had been part of the massive Cheveley Estate, which at the time stretched over approximately 7,800 acres on the south side of Newmarket, running from Cheveley up to the Stetchworth Toll roundabout by the July Course. This property had been one of the leading studs in the land under the ownership of Colonel Harry McCalmont, whose home-bred colt Isinglass had won the Triple Crown in 1893. However, the stallions had lived at what is now Cheveley Park Stud, rather than Banstead Manor, with the box in which Isinglass (who posthumously became champion broodmare sire in 1912) resided having been more recently the bedroom of Cheveley Park's stalwart Pivotal.
Henry Morriss was an influential businessman in the Far East, where his interests included part-ownership of the North China Daily News as well as being the principal of the Shanghai bullion broking firm Lester, Johnson & Morriss. He was also an enthusiastic participant, as both amateur rider and owner, in the thriving racing scene there. Eventually he decided to broaden his racing horizons and in 1915 he registered his colours in Great Britain: rose, black and rose hooped cap.
Morriss chose Fred Darling as his trainer and in 1921 he gave the latter an annual assignment: at the sales each autumn he should buy the yearling he rated most highly, irrespective of the price. It did not take long before the wisdom of this decision became plain. At Tattersalls' St Leger Yearling Sale in Doncaster in 1923, Darling selected a colt, bred in Ireland by James Maher, by Phalaris from the Buckwheat mare Waffles. He bought him on Morriss's behalf for 6,300 guineas and the colt turned out to be Manna.
Maher was a regular producer of top-class horses, including the previous year's St Leger winner Caligula as well as St Louis, who had achieved nothing as a two-year-old in 1923 but would improve so dramatically over the winter that he won the 2,000 Guineas the following spring. In one sense, Waffles was not an obvious candidate to credit Maher's stud (at Confey Castle, near Leixlip) with further glory as she was by Buckwheat, who had stood for only 48 guineas, and she was so small (barely reaching 15 hands) that she was never broken in, instead being covered as a three-year-old in 1920 by the Gallinule stallion Great Sport (Ire). However, Maher rated her highly, not least because she was inbred 3×2 to St Simon.
Waffles's mating with Great Sport produced Bunworry who was a very good two-year-old in 1923, winning four races. Bunworry's achievements helped the Phalaris yearling to catch the attention of Fred Darling (and others, hence the high price which Darling had to pay to buy him) as did the colt's appearance: he was a beautifully-made, medium-sized horse, possessing all the quality which one associated with descendants of St Simon (who appeared three times in Manna's pedigree as he was the sire of Phalaris's granddam Cheery).
In time, Waffles's distinction became very clear. She bred two Classic winners, the second being the 1931 St Leger hero Sandwich, by Sansovino. Manna's full-brother Parwiz won the City And Suburban Handicap at Epsom and went to stud in Argentina. Bunworry found her way to Federico Tesio's broodmare band and became ancestress of many notable horses including as third dam of Botticelli. Waffles even gained further fame as dam of the infamous Tuppence, for whom Dorothy Paget paid a sale-topping price of 6,600 guineas at the 1931 St Leger Yearling Sale (two days after Sandwich's Classic triumph) only to find that she had a horse of very limited ability on her hands, a vastly inferior stablemate of her champion steeplechaser Golden Miller in Basil Briscoe's Beechwood House Stables in Exning.
It soon become clear that Manna had plenty of ability. It also became clear that he was difficult, to the extent that he reputedly holds the distinction of being the only one of the many horses trained by Fred Darling to kick the great man. His boisterous temperament, though, did not prevent him from working extremely well, to the extent that he made his debut in what was Britain's most valuable two-year-old race, the National Breeders' Produce Stakes at Sandown (now run as the National Stakes, with very different conditions and listed status). He finished third that day and went on to win two important races in his first season: the Richmond Stakes at Goodwood and the Moulton Stakes at Newmarket.
Manna made further progress over the winter and began his Classic season in fine style, winning the 2,000 Guineas impressively and the Derby even more easily by eight lengths. However, he possibly had luck on his side at Epsom as fourth-placed Solario lost many lengths at the start. At Ascot two weeks later Solario suggested that he may well have been an unlucky loser in the Derby, beating Manna in the Ascot Derby (now King Edward VII Stakes, which name it was given in 1926), admittedly in receipt of 10lb from the Derby winner.
Despite having won the 2,000 Guineas so well, Manna started as long as 9/1 for the Derby, the general opinion being that stamina might be a problem for a son of the sprinter Phalaris. (Nowadays we regard Phalaris as one of the most influential Classic sires of all time but that, of course, is the wisdom of hindsight. Manna came from his third crop and was one of the first horses to make it clear that Phalaris was not merely a source of speed, while another horse to do this was Phalaris's fourth-crop son Warden Of The Marches, winner of the St Leger in 1926). Whether Manna would have stayed the St Leger distance was, sadly, never established as he went amiss when attempting to complete the Triple Crown, limping across the line among the also-rans, many lengths adrift of the winner Solario.
Influence Felt Across Hemispheres
Manna began covering at Banstead Manor in the spring of 1926 and went on to enjoy significant success at stud, without being the champion which he had been on the racecourse.
Manna's greatest achievement as a stallion was to breed Colombo. Bought inexpensively by Lord Glanely as a yearling for 510 guineas, Colombo was an outstanding two-year-old in 1933, trained in Newmarket by Lord Glanely's private trainer Thomas Hogg. Colombo raced seven times at two and won easily on each occasion. He ended the year hailed as the best two-year-old since The Tetrarch, described in the press as “one of the century's wonder horses” and “a perfect racing machine”.
Colombo resumed at three by winning the Craven Stakes at Newmarket “in a canter”, giving 20lb to the runner-up, before justifying 2/7 favouritism in the 2,000 Guineas. Sadly, that proved to be his final victory. He endured a torrid passage in the Derby en route to finishing third to Windsor Lad and then was beaten at 1/5 in the St. James's Palace Stakes at Ascot. A knee injury then forced him into retirement at Lord Glanely's stud in Exning. Colombo sired two Classic winners (Lord Glanely's home-bred filly Dancing Time in the 1941 1,000 Guineas and Sir Willam Cooke's home-bred colt Happy Knight in the 1946 2,000 Guineas) but his greatest legacy was as the sire of the breed-shaping broodmare Oceana who, exported by Stanley Wootton to Australia and given repeated matings with Star Kingdom at Baramul Stud, produced the full-brothers Todman, Noholme, Shifnal and Farringdon.
Colombo was not the only horse to establish Manna as a very good sire of two-year-olds. Lord Astor's Mannamead, trained by Joe Lawson at Manton, was an unbeaten juvenile in 1931 when he shared top weight in the Free Handicap with his stablemate Orwell, who went on to win the following year's 2,000 Guineas. Mannamead subsequently became champion sire in Hungary after his export there in 1937. Manitoba, bred and raced by Lord Woolavington and trained by Fred Darling, was another very good juvenile, winning the Coventry Stakes at Ascot and the Boscawen Stakes at Newmarket (beating Hyperion) in 1932. He achieved little at three and four and was exported to Australia, where he was champion sire in 1943/'44 and 1944/'45.
Miracle was another classy two-year-old sired by Manna, winning both his starts in 1931, the Selsey Stakes at Goodwood and the Gimcrack Stakes at York, despite having seemed so big and backward as a yearling that Lord Rosebery had been able to buy him for only 170 guineas. At three he won the Newmarket Stakes in the spring before finishing third in the Derby and later landed the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown.
As a broodmare sire, Manna's greatest achievements came via his daughter Pasca. When establishing Banstead Manor Stud, Morriss had bought as a foundation mare Soubriquet, runner-up in both the 1,000 Guineas and Oaks in 1922 and a half-sister to the 1916 Derby and Oaks victrix Fifinella, for 12,500 guineas at Tattersalls' December Sale in 1925. Soubriquet's mating in 1927 with Manna produced Pasca, who became dam of the 1938 2,000 Guineas and Eclipse winner Pasch and granddam of the 1953 Derby and King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Pinza. The former, who was trained by Fred Darling for Henry Morriss, held the distinction for many years of being the most recent 2,000 Guineas winner not to have raced as a juvenile, a distinction which he ceded in 2024 to Noble Speech.
Pinza too had a strong connection to Banstead as he was conceived there, a son of the resident stallion Chanteur (Fr). Mrs Morriss owned his dam Pasqua (GB) (Donatello {Ity}) but sold her, carrying Pinza, for 2,000 guineas at the December Sale in 1949, where she was bought by Fred Darling who is thus officially credited as the breeder of Pinza. This situation was the reverse of that of the 1940 Derby winner Pont l'Eveque, whose dam Ponteba Morriss had bought in 1936, with Pont l'Eveque in utero. Morriss retained the young Pont l'Eveque and raced him as a two-year-old but sold him, with his Classic engagements, to Fred Darling for £500 at the end of 1939, a transaction prompted by the uncertainty resultant from the outbreak of war.
Chanteur was one of many good stallions who followed in Manna's footsteps at Banstead Manor. Two of the early ones were Morriss the home-breds Artist's Proof and Tai-Ying. The former, a son of Gainsborough, was the good horse bred by Henry Morriss at Banstead and ultimately became most notable as the maternal grandsire of Petition. Tai-Yang was the result of Soubriquet's visit to Solario in 1929 and retired to Banstead after a lengthy but light racing career in which he ran only twice, both times at Newmarket, winning each time: he landed the Jockey Club Stakes as a three-year-old in 1933 and the Chippenham Stakes in 1935.
The Morriss colours are still carried today by Sons And Lovers, raced by Hugo Morriss and Kirsten Rausing | Racingfotos
Henry Morriss died in Shanghai in 1951. His wife Vera had overseen the stud on his behalf but when he died she handed command over to their son Nicky. When Nicky died in 1963, the stud was taken over by his eldest son Hugo, who sold it in 1987 to Juddmonte. Nicky and Hugo each bred a Derby place-getter at Banstead Manor, being responsible for Alcaeus (runner-up in 1960) and Pentland Firth (third in 1972) respectively. All told, the three generations of Morrisses stood some notable sires at Banstead including Supreme Court, Nearula, Ballymoss, Shantung, Wollow, Lombard, Ile De Bourbon and Beldale Flutter.
Echoes of the Morriss era at Banstead continued to resound after the stud had been sold to Juddmonte. The Derby was won in 1988 by a horse conceived there, the Aga Khan's Ile De Bourbon colt Kahyasi. In the same year, the last good horse whom Hugo bred at Banstead Manor, Persian Heights (GB) (Persian Bold {Ire}), was first past the post in the G1 International Stakes at York in its final running before it became the Juddmonte International, which it remains to this day.
Hugo boarded some mares at Lanwades Stud after selling Banstead Manor and the Morriss livery continues to be seen on British racecourses. Most notably it was carried with distinction in 2023 and '24 by Sons And Lovers, a winner at Newmarket as a two-year-old and four times stakes-placed at three. It would be lovely to think that this likeable son of Study Of Man could enjoy a good season as a four-year-old in 2025, 100 years after Hugo's grandfather bought Banstead Manor and put it very firmly on the bloodstock map.
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