In 1950 my brother Peter returned from The Royal Army Veterinary Corps at Melton Mowbray and he was brimming with ambition. While he was away he’d been thinking and with national service complete he could start to plan for the future. Peter had always wanted to train racehorses and the time was right to put in an application for a licence.

The regulations dictated that to obtain a licence the applicant must have at least seven horses in training. The Villa boasted just four equine residents and hence we were three short. It was time to be creative.

We scoured the local farms in an attempt to cobble together the required quota and soon the four ‘racehorses’ were joined by an old broodmare, a showjumper and a beast who bore a remarkable resemblance to a mule. I don’t know where he actually came from, Scarborough beach perhaps, but he had a leg on each corner and that was sufficient credential to complete the not-so-magnificent seven.

After watching the post for weeks the letter finally arrived. Peter’s application had been successful and it was now time for work to start in earnest. With no owners to back him and no financial input other than what he could scratch together himself it was going to be a challenge.

Peter’s first yard at The Villa was a higgledy-piggledy place, a farm with a small stable attached housing a motley collection of horses. The boxes were built out of anything we could get our hands on. A favourite was old railway sleepers, which Peter and I would bring to the yard and pile up.

Peter needed staff for his training yard and the natural step for me as his younger brother would be to join his fledgling operation. I bestowed the title of ‘head lad’ upon myself. Whether he needed a head lad with his scant collection of horses was debatable but it sounded important.

Each morning we’d exercise the four horses round the perimeter of the six-acre field. It was hard work, and none of the horses were any good, but through hard work we eventually managed to cobble together some money to buy some yearlings. We planned to visit the sales at Newmarket but there wasn’t enough money for both of us to go so Peter went on his own, setting off on his bicycle to Malton to catch the bus and making the final leg by hitching a ride on a Newmarket-bound horsebox.

Peter bought four or five horses and sold on a couple of yearlings straight away because he couldn’t get them home. The others were taken on Malton-bound boxes with spare stalls after a little persuasion and a small incentive. Peter himself returned home courtesy of a lift on a furniture lorry that was heading for York and was back on the farm in time to help me milk the cows.

None of the horses that Peter had bought at Newmarket would turn out to be any good and they were soon sold on.

Peter and I worked hard. We argued a lot but we never had a wrong word. That might sound like a contradiction but ‘agree to disagree’ was always our way. Differences of opinion were always met head-on with discussion, not bottled up. Bottling breeds resentment and that’s no way forward.

Despite the hard graft and long hours a whole three years would pass before Peter's first winner. The unforgettable day was the 7th March 1953 and the course was Market Rasen as Double Rose collected £100 winning prizemoney when taking the second division of the Hainton Novices Hurdle over two-miles, ridden by Jack Boddy, at odds of 5-1.

Peter had to wait until 15th April 1955, some five years after taking out a licence, for his first flat winner. King's Coup was the horse to oblige, taking the Clifton Stakes on his debut at Thirsk, at odds of 25/1.

History would repeat six years later at Musselburgh when Jimmy Etherington was the jockey to boot home my own first flat winner, Great Rock, in the Edinburgh Spring Handicap in April 1961.

The story of Great Rock, and the 60 or so years of training that followed, will be told in time.