Owner of the Bramham Park Estate whose single-minded vision turned it into a renowned international equestrian venue.
The Bramham horse trials have seen one man's vision come slowly to fruition from the initial, loss-making one-day event in 1973 to their hosting the eventing trials for the London Olympics this summer.
That one man - was a former cavalry officer, George Lane Fox, who, after leaving the Army in 1970, was quick to see the potential of his family estate, Bramham Park in West Yorkshire, as an equestrian venue. He realised that it could fill the gap left when the nearby Harewood House horse trials were discontinued in 1960.
Genial and courteous but also determined and energetic, Lane Fox proved a natural in the dual roles of event director and cross-country course designer, which he held until handing over to professionals in later years, and Bramham fulfilled its potential to the extent that it is now recognised internationally as a leading event in the horse trials calendar, attended by some 60,000 visitors each year.
A fitting apotheosis was reached last summer when Bramham International Horse Trials, as it has become, busied itself with filling another gap that had been left when waterlogged ground caused the cancellation of horse-trials selection events for the London Olympics that had been scheduled to take place at Badminton, Gloucestershire, and Chatsworth, Derbyshire.
Bramham's limestone-rich soil, along with the adaptability of its staff and volunteers, allowed it to step into the breach, extending the duration of its cross-country element by one day to enable final Olympic trials for 100 more riders than had been expected.
Always an internationalist (he was a Gauloises-smoking Francophile), Lane Fox was thrilled to be hosting the riders from 12 nations on four continents who were keen to impress their national selectors at Bramham.
Although somewhat frail by the time of the Olympic trials and having long surrendered the role of event director to others, Lane Fox - immaculately turned out in bowler hat and dark suit - insisted on presenting the prizes as usual. Among them were two to his cousin, William Fox-Pitt, who won his sixth Bramham title this year, and one to Zara Phillips, daughter of Lane Fox's friend and former cross-country course designer, Captain Mark Phillips.
The elder son of Lieutenant-Colonel Joe Ward Jackson (who took his wife, Marcia's, Lane Fox surname by deed poll in 1937), George Francis Lane Fox was born in 1931 and followed his father to Eton and Sandhurst and thence into the Royal Horse Guards (the Blues). He was later selected for service with the Guards Independent Parachute Company (the Pathfinders).
Strikingly fit as a young man and a lifelong enthusiast for horses and hunting, he could still call upon his reserves of energy when he left the Army and started investigating new directions for his family's 6,000-acre Bramham Park estate, near Wetherby, where he was the ninth generation of his family to live.
He was not the first to spot Bramham Park’s suitability as a horse trials venue. In 1960, when the only such event in the North, at Harewood House, had ceased operation. the then governing body of eventing, the British Horse Society, had tried to interest Lane Fox’s parents in hosting a similar event.
They had been too preoccupied restoring the estate to take up the idea , but a decade later it seemed an inviting prospect to Lane Fox, who strongly felt that there should be a horse-trials event "north of the Trent", as he put it, to match those in the South (at Badminton) and Midlands (at Burghley).
He tested the water with a one-day it in 1973, acting as both event director and cross-country course designer. Encouraged by the experience he staged a three-day event the following year, and soon Bramham was kick-starting the careers of many well-known eventers. The event made no money at all in its first few years, and indeed had to be subsidised , by Lane Fox's simultaneous efforts to develop Bramham's farming and forestry businesses.
His eldest son Nick, who now runs the estate, remembers meetings he attended as a teenager at which the wisdom of his father’s continuing with the horse trials was strenuously debated . But Lane Fox Sr was determined. "His tenacity in keeping the horse trials going for the first ten years, when they cost him money, is an example to me and everybody else,” his son said. "He had faith the event would get there in the end and would build and build, and it did."
Balance sheets started to look better a year or two after the event was awarded international status at the start of the Eighties.
Lane Fox's Bramham International Horse Trials differed from other great horse trials, such as Badminton, Burghley and Blenheim, in that it was run by its founding father as an integral part of his own estate. And although, over the years, the event has got bigger and more commercial, initially its character was really just George Lane Fox, a man of innate charm and colossal enthusiasm for the sport.
"I do sometimes wonder why amazing bands of volunteers so willingly give up their weekends to help out at horse trials," Captain Mark Phillips said, "but I think in Bramham's case George was such a gentleman that the volunteers were all simply doing it for him. He was old school in the nicest possible way - charming, polite, and with the gentlest sense of humour."
When it came, Bramham's international status meant that Lane Fox had to bow out of cross-country course design himself and employ specialist designers. Over the years, they included Phillips, Hugh Thomas (now director of Badminton), Mike Etherington-Smith (now British Eventing's chief executive) and Sue Benson (the cross-country course designer for the London Olympics).
Although Lane Fox was the most courteous of men, his passion for his horse trials could on occasion drive him to plain speaking. His course designers were warned that he was unlikely to change his mind. What they designed was done very much in conjunction with Lane Fox who, says Etherington-Smith, had "a really good 'feel' for what horses could be asked to jump at a time when the sport was emerging into what it is nowadays, and there is no doubt that he was at the forefront of the sport, leading by example."
In his prime, Lane Fox was involved almost all year round with the horse trials, one year's plans beginning almost as soon as the previous year's final visitors were leaving, because he was concerned with the most intimate detail, as well as the big picture. Particularly relishing the international side of the event, he was, as recently as last winter, still personally involved in selecting and inviting the international judges for this summer's event, wanting to be sure they would fit in with Bramham's ethos, exemplified by its 500 or so volunteers.
He married Victoria (Tor) Duff in 1962. A keen horsewoman, his wife played a huge supporting role in the running of the horse trials, and in the considerable hospitality involved. After her death in 1997, Lane Fox handed over the family home and, in large part, the running of the estate - to his eldest son, although he maintained a close involvement with the horse trials.
He delighted guests at the annual cocktail party by remembering not only their names but the names of their horses, too, and was ever the grateful host to the event's loyal volunteers.
He was appointed High Sheriff of West Yorkshire in 1975 and Deputy Lieutenant in 1990. He was also president of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, Master of the Bramham Moor Foxhounds, and a keen shot.
He is survived by his three sons.
Major George Lane Fox, founder of the Bramham International Horse Trials, was born on May 15 1931. He died on October 9, 2012, aged 81
© The Times, London 26/10/2012.
Image courtesy of :- Rossparry.co.uk / Syndication / Yorkshire Post
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