Our final meeting of the year was an illustrated talk by Mrs Mary Watkin Jones who is an author and raconteur.

Mrs Watkin Jones comes from Lixwm and has a family history in farming and connection with horses and, from the age of 2 ½ was out riding with the hunt.

Mary began her talk by telling the history of her family`s connection with Joseph Dodd who became involved with horses through Lord Dudley who hired Joe to look after his horses and served with him through the Boer War and the First World War.

Later in life, he met up again with Winston Churchill having met him in WW1. After the Boer war, this time Lord Dudley moved to Ireland and Joe went with him and it was during this time that he learned to train racehorses from the Irish.

As he was now married with a family he rented a farm in Shrewsbury and in 1913 he obtained his trainer's licence. Tipperary Tim was owned by Harold Kenyon and came to be trained by Joe at Shrewsbury. The horse had a reputation for “never falling” but was relatively slow. He was also “tubed” to enable his breathing.

Tipperary Tim was entered in the 1928 Grand National at Aintree racecourse at the age of 10 years and ridden by an amateur jockey, Bill Dutton a Cambridge-educated solicitor from Chester who had left the profession to pursue horse riding. Tipperary Tim was the 100 - 1 outsider and Dutton later recalled that he was told “You'll only win if all the others fall” The field in 1928 was the largest to date, the going was very heavy and there was dense fog!!! There were many fallers and by the second time round at Beechers Brook there were only 5 horses leftAt the last fence Tim drew level with Billy Barton who was hindered by a loose horse and fell leaving Tipperary Tim to win the race. Billy Barton was remounted and came home 2nd, the only 2 horses to complete the courseThe winning purse was 5000 sovereigns plus a 2000 sovereign cup Tipperary Tim entered the 1929 Grand National still at 100-1 despite his previous year's win but fell and never had success after.

We were then treated to an old video of the race which showed how grim the weather and the race were.

Thank you Mary for a most interesting evening. The evening ended with refreshments, served by Josie and Isobel thank you, ladies.

Our next meeting is on 19th January and will be entitled “Commonwealth War Graves” this will be given by Adrian Hughes who will be well known to many of you.