Description
A silver two-handled trophy cup,
by The Goldsmiths and Silversmiths Company, London 1912,
of circular form with scroll handles and central girdle, on a raised circular foot, inscribed ' Atherstone Hunt Point to Point March 20th 1914, Heavy Weight Race Won By S. Sassoon's Cockbird', height 15.3cm, approx. weight 28oz.
Provenance: Siegfried Sassoon and thence by descent to the present owner.
In the second volume of his autobiography, 'The Weald of Youth' (Faber and Faber 1942) Sassoon writes about this race: 'The Heavy-Weight race ought to have been won by H.A. Brown - one of the greatest amateur riders of his time. But he was on rather an inferior jumper and fell two fences from the end leaving Norman (Loder) and myself to contest a very close finish, during which we weren't moving nearly so fast as some of the spectators imagined, and which resulted in Cockbird winning by not much more than the length of his neck'.
