The St Leger Festival takes on extra significance this year as 2026 marks the 250th anniversary of the oldest Classic race – the St Leger Stakes. 

Devised by Anthony St Leger in 1776, the race was initially referred to as ‘A Sweepstake of 25 Guineas’ and had its inaugural running at Cantley Common before moving to Town Moor two years later. This original race was run over two miles before being shortened to 1 mile, 6 furlongs and 193 yards in 1813, a distance almost identical to today’s incarnation (1 mile, 6 furlongs and 115 yards).

The title was decided at a dinner party held in 1778 at the Red Lion Inn located in the Market Place, Doncaster.

The St Leger Stakes is the oldest of Britain’s five Classic races and is the last of the five to be run each year. It is the final leg of the English Triple Crown, which begins with the 2000 Guineas, includes the Derby and finishes at the Leger. The race also completes the Fillies Triple Crown, following on from the 1000 Guineas and The Oaks. 

The Group 1 flat horse race is open to three-year-old thoroughbred colts and fillies. The first winner was an unnamed filly owned by the event’s organiser, the 2nd Marquess of Rockingham, who was later named Allabaculia. The last winner – in 2025 – was Scandinavia, ridden by Tom Marquand and trained by the Irish maestro Aidan O’Brien – his ninth winner of the Classic. Significantly, O’Brien has trained the last three winners: Continuous (2023), Jan Brueghel (2024) and Scandinavia last year.

The St Leger is the pinnacle of the racing calendar over the four-day festival and as such, requires a fitting trophy. In 2007, that responsibility was given to Sheffield-based Chris Knight, who was commissioned to design a commemorative rosebowl with a twist – the centre of the trophy must be removable for the winning owner to keep and must therefore be replaced each year.

After designing and creating the initial trophy alongside Sarah Denny and Owen Waterhouse, Chris decided to commission a different designer each year to make the centrepiece, giving it a sense of uniqueness and extra prestige. 

“The overall concept behind the St Leger Trophy was to produce a classic yet modern piece of silverware that had the ability to be re-designed or reinvigorated each year,” explained Chris. “Hand-wrought and weighing in at approximately 10kg, the solid silver trophy is composed of a large rose water dish with a central rose bowl. The large dish is the permanent trophy of the St Leger Stakes whilst the central, removable, rose bowl is the ‘gift’ to the winner of the race.”

Having spent over 35 years working with metals, Chris has vast experience of fine metalwork in silver, bronze, aluminium and steel and has produced pieces from the intimate to the monumental. Known for functionally and visually provocative silver, he has exhibited internationally and is represented in public collections at the likes of The Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, The Victoria & Albert Museum, Sheffield Museums and Galleries, Sheffield Cathedral and Birmingham City Museum.

Born in Bishop’s Stortford, Chris was encouraged by one of his teachers to pursue a career in jewellery and silver-making and, after completing a BA in Silversmithing and Jewellery at Sheffield City Polytechnic, worked as a goldsmith in America for three years before returning to the UK to attend the Royal College of Art. He set up a studio on the Southbank with his wife, Maria, before relocating back to Sheffield in 1996. 

“Our Southbank studio was closing and we were looking for other studios,” said Chris. “We came across this disused power station, behind which was a little row of Victorian terraces, on the end of which was a paintworks. It was on the market for £65,000 – we didn’t have a penny to rub together.

“A few months later we’d moved up to Sheffield and within a year we’d saved up enough money, because of the cost-of-living difference, to buy a house for £65,000. The only difference was, that power station is the Tate Modern, that paintworks is on the footprint of multi-million-pound apartments. 

“We moved into a really Dickensian workshop in Sheffield; at the time it was a single lightbulb swinging in a misty window or a pre-fab, there wasn’t any halfway house.”

Chris soon settled in the city and as well as working at the university also maintained his workshop where he would produce his own pieces. 

To date, the St Leger Stakes Trophy remains one his proudest accomplishments, mainly because it’s an ongoing project, provides works for lots of people and creates a platform for up and coming designers to showcase their work.

“I remember that it was people believing in you in those moments that kept you going,” said Chris, who is now placing that same trust in a different designer every year. 

Initially, when Chris first won the commission, he would hold a little design competition but soon found this would draw out the process too much and so trusted his instinct – and experience – to choose someone who would bring something different each year.

The designer for the centrepiece of the 2026 St Leger Stakes Trophy is Jen Ricketts, a North Yorkshire-based designer who gained a first-class honours degree from De Montfort University and went on to complete a year-long silversmithing residency at Bishopland. 

Jen has received awards from The Goldsmiths’ Craft and Design Council London and from the Craft&Design Magazine and in 2015, she completed a prestigious commission for the Lord Mayor of Sheffield which was subsequently presented to the Queen on for her visit to Sheffield on Maundy Thursday. The piece was then on exhibition in Buckingham Palace in Summer 2017.

Jen has perfected the silversmithing technique of hand saw piercing, using the finest of saw blades to hand cut her designs, which often feature intricate city skylines. It was these designs that captured Chris’s attention and after meeting Jen at the Silver Space incubator unit in Sheffield, he commissioned her for this year’s prize. 

“I think the style of her work, being very pictorial, about cityscapes, was a prime opportunity to celebrate the city and the significance of the race,” explained Chris. 

“Chris gave me a brief that suited my style of work,” Jen said of the commission. “There was a loose brief with a few significant buildings I needed to include in the skyline, as well as the date, but it was left for me to interpret that in whatever way I want to.”

The buildings mentioned by the designer include Doncaster cathedral, the grandstand with the clocktower and the Red Lion Inn. If you delve into the history of the St Leger and the world’s oldest Classic race, you’ll soon come to understand the significance. Jen’s design also includes the Yorkshire rose as well as some horses racing in the foreground.

After working in Sheffield for a number of years, Jen relocated to her family home in North Yorkshire and has the long-term aim of opening a little workshop-studio where people can come and see her work on display. In the meantime she’s putting the finishing touches to the St Leger Stakes Trophy, which is something that can’t be rushed, despite the tight deadlines.

“Every piece can be challenging just because they are all different,” Jen said of her work. “You kind of learn more on every one. You’re always problem solving, you can never just switch off.”

Both Chris and Jen will be in attendance at this year’s St Leger as well as the magnificent trophy that they both helped to create. It’s a fitting piece for a tremendous occasion.