This year marks the 50th anniversary of a Newmarket landmark which, at a time of huge change for the town, was seen to represent a link between its past and its future.

The Lunging Rein sculpture, which looks down on Newmarket’s market square, was unveiled in 1975 a year in which many aspects of town life were changing beyond all recognition.

The new A45 bypass was completed, the new Rookery shopping centre had been built in the town centre replacing a warren of small shops and houses and Newmarket’s market dating from 1200 AD was relocated from the High Street to the newly created market square. And the New Astley Club, now the racing centre, which had replaced the original Victorian Astley Institute in Lisburn Road, had opened its doors close by in the newly created Fred Archer Way.

The modernist mural was the work of the renowned artist and sculptor Geoffrey Earle Wickham whose theme was a groom with a rearing horse at the end of a lunging rein, a traditional Newmarket scene but with a modern
twist.

And its was composed of modern material, a mixture of concrete and fibreglass to reduce its weight as it was to be wall-mounted rather than free standing.

London-born Wickham had been making the news himself for some years. He was a versatile artist who worked in a variety of mediums. However it was his modernist sculpture which had drawn him into the public eye both at home and abroad where his work still be seen in France, Germany, Bahrain and Lagos.

Nine years before he was commissioned to create the Newmarket work he had been asked to design a new structure for the centre of Swindon which had also been undergoing modernisation and re-structuring. His seven foot concrete cube weighing 17 tonnes and sitting in a 24ft square water pool was installed in July 1966 and received a mixed response from Swindon’s residents. Unperturbed Wickham told the Swindon Echo: “It’s an entirely new art form and it may take people a little while to get used to it.”

Five years later his work The Fountainhead was installed in London’s Belgravia behind Sotheby’s auction house and won him the Royal Society of British Sculptors’ silver medal.

At the time he started work on The Lunging Rein he was principal lecturer in fine art at the Sir John Cass School of Art in London where he remained until he retired in 1982. Over the next few years his sight began to deteriorate and in 1996 he was registered blind and could only continue to produce artwork with the help of an assistant. He died aged 85 in 2005.

Half a century after the sculpture was installed it still provides a permanent reminder of Newmarket’s past and a reminder of how, at the time, the town was changing to meet the challenges of the future.

Written by Alison Hayes, Newmarket Journal