Peter undertook a lot of research for this book, but he wears his learning lightly. He is a master prose writer. I enjoyed references to my favourite writers, such as Louis MacNeice and WG Sebald. Steeplechase Park, a New York City amusement park from 1897 to 1964, named for its racing rollercoaster Steeplechase (horse racing), a type of horse race in which participants are required to jump over obstacles The following year, a new star emerged. Bred by Walter M. Jeffords and raced by his widow, Kay, Lonesome Glory flunked out as a flat racehorse prospect and a show horse. But, in the hands of trainer Bruce Miller, the Transworld gelding emerged as the dominant competitor of the 1990s. Indeed, his championships spanned the decade, from 1992 to his fifth Eclipse Award in 1999.

I thought this book was absolutely fascinating. It is full of interesting stories about places of worship both large and small, famous or obscure. As the author said at the recent event, he wanted to make this book about the buildings certainly but also about the people, communities and stories connected with the buildings and about hope. The book is a song of praise to churches and how they can be an touching place of past and present. The jumping season in Australia normally takes place from March until September. (some minor races are held either side of these months). Horses used for steeplechasing are primarily former flat racing horses, rather than horses specifically bred for jumping. Buildings like Old St Paul’s seem to stand outside time in a way that would make perfect sense to quite a number of people Ross interviews. At Durham, the aged guide talks about St Cuthbert and the Venerable Bede as though they are both still living; at Lindisfarne, the former curate of the church next to the priory, tells him that as far as she is concerned Saints Aidan and Cuthbert ‘are just as alive as we are, though in a different state’. And although I wouldn’t go quite so far, I do think that knowledge of the past can, by making us aware of the fleetingness of our own lives, can gift us, however briefly, a sense of timelessness. Of all the reasons for taking up the hobby of what John Betjeman called ‘church-crawling’ – which Ross, tongue only slightly in cheek, suggests ought to be as popular as Munro-bagging – this is, I suspect, the one that chimes the loudest with him: that nowhere else do the past and present slip so easily into each other. Animals Australia (2009-04-27), Call to stop Warrnambool jumps racing Carnival, archived from the original on 2009-04-30 , retrieved 2009-05-12Change of heart as Oakbank retires names of iconic jumps races". www.racenet.com.au. 17 April 2022.

The Clarks were steeplechase people, and no less so were the members of Wilmington’s duPont family. When Marion duPont’s brother, William duPont Jr., built Delaware Park, a steeplechase course designed by Morris Dixon was one of its distinctive features. Also in the mid-1930s, duPont built the Fair Hill steeplechase course in northern Maryland to duplicate the look and feel of an English country steeplechase course. The real value of churches, he maintains, is that they hold the past and present, decay and use, in a rare balance, that their buildings have a poetry and spirituality about them that only intensifies as they come under threat.’ David Robinson finds the beauty of church, art, and community in Peter Ross’s latest travelogue, Steeple Chasing. Despite his breathless itinerary, Ross allows each church that he visits to breathe, and to offer up its peculiar story. He is no dispassionate purveyor of curiosities: he cares, and cares deeply, situating each church in its history and in the lives of those who love it. The cumulative effect is at once celebratory and elegiac. Tennessee State Historian Walter T. Durham's book Grasslands relates the history of the Southern Grasslands Hunt and Racing Foundation, a group that organized the first international steeplechase held on U.S. soil 80 years ago at Grassland Downs, a 24-square-mile (62km 2) course located in Gallatin, TN between 1929 and 1932.From the author of A Tomb With a View– a celebration of the weird and wonderful churches of Britain Victoria Park Harriers' steeplechase coach Richard Newbold on the final run in at Southend 1995 - a perfect example of how not to relax. Note, also, the drift into lane 2! A steeplechase is a distance horse race in which competitors are required to jump diverse fence and ditch obstacles. Steeplechasing is primarily conducted in Ireland (where it originated), the United Kingdom, Canada, United States, Australia, and France. The name is derived from early races in which orientation of the course was by reference to a church steeple, jumping fences and ditches and generally traversing the many intervening obstacles in the countryside.