Super-active Appleby man and harness racing legend Christopher “Kit” Bousfield celebrated his 100th birthday with a card from the Queen and scores of other messages from well-wishers across the UK.
Typically, however, Kit spent some of his special day ploughing on with regular jobs at the Holme Farm family home in Appleby where he was born in 1922 and has worked all his life with several generations of relatives.
“He was down the yard working, like he does, and carried on as normal; feeding the calves and his horses,” said Catherine Alderson, one of his four daughters.
As Kit worked, the postwoman arrived with his eagerly-awaited special greeting from Her Majesty the Queen. “The postwoman also gave him a kiss — she had never delivered anything from Buckingham Palace before!” said Catherine.
“He had secretly been checking the postbox quite frequently. He was trying to play it down, making out he wasn’t bothered, but he was. He gave the card a kiss when he opened it! He was really chuffed.”
Kit, who was surrounded by his family during the day, tucked into a cream tea and welcomed many friends and visitors into his home. He also spent time catching up with scores of greetings posted on Facebook and reading many cards sent from across the UK. One was sent by Appleby Rotary Club and an official letter from mayor Gareth Hayes on behalf of the town council read: “Congratulations and thank you for being a loyal and trusted resident of our town.”
Kit’s willingness to embrace technology also came in handy as youngest daughter Rachel Kane was unable to visit Appleby from her home in Ireland last week. Instead, family members were brought together by a WhatsApp video call screened on a TV.
“He gets on well with technology,” said Catherine. “He will look at my Facebook, likes to look at the auction sites and sometimes watches live auctions. He sits on his iPad and flicks through things. I work at Appleby Medical Practice and the doctors are amazed with him. He is a super-active man for his age.”
Fittingly, his birthday week ended on Sunday with the latest British Harness Racing Club (BHRC) meeting to take place at famed Holme Farm. “He was sitting on the lawn, watched the racing and he was made up,” said Catherine.
A month earlier, around 1,000 people had attended a special Holme Farm centenary meeting held in his honour at which he became one of the oldest men ever to drive horses four-in-hand.
An avid trainer and once one of the country’s top drivers, Kit was the first person inducted into the BHRC Hall of Fame, in 2020, in recognition of his lifelong contribution to trotting.
He had grown up with an inherited love of animals with his father, Christopher, owning a pacer back in 1925. Kit and brothers Jack, Tom, Walton and Jim went on to become well known owners and breeders of pacers around the trotting circuit. He and Jack were also successful drivers, racking up many big race wins — in front of large crowds at Musselburgh and Appleby — while Kit also secured drives for others.
Kit’s first success in the cart had been with Pandora at Appleby Spring Races in 1953. He has vivid memories, too, of guideless racing with horses let off and raced without jockeys.
Kit, along with one favourite and successful horse, Tiny Trews, was a regular competitor at Kent Showground. And it was during trips to the south of England that he would be picked up by Rolls Royce and accompanying gangsters believed to be friends of the Kray twins who treated him well but, he recalls, they were “slippery buggers”.
Kit also kept thoroughbreds, his only Flat winner being Hassan — trained by the late Eden-based Sir Gordon Richards — in 1970.
Kit was aged 10 when he heard the death bell marking his father’s passing, aged 47, in 1932, while he and a brother were making early morning deliveries by bicycle having begun their farming lives by milking cows by hand. His mother Catherine took over the tough farming work which at the time was carried out using Clydesdale horses and carts.
Educated at St Lawrence’s and Appleby primary schools, Kit left at 14 to continue farming and served in the Home Guard during the Second World War when Italian and German prisoners of war also worked on the farm.
Kit and brothers were among the first in the area to start sileaging. He has seen many technological advances in agriculture and still farms to this day with eldest daughter Helen of whom he says: “She keeps me going.”
They currently have around 95 cattle and 375 sheep. “We argue every day,” Helen laughs. “It has to be his way or no way!” She added: “I got him a zimmer frame the other week — he said ‘I don’t want that bloody thing, it’s for old people!’”
Away from work, family and trotting, Kit’s hobbies include watching football and boxing. Kit and his wife Sandra (nee Smurthwaite) celebrated their golden wedding anniversary this year having been married at St Lawrence’s, Appleby, in April, 1972. Their daughters and sons-in-law are Helen and Mike Holmes; Claire and Barney Slack; Catherine and Mark Alderson; and Rachel and Patrick Kane; and they have eight grandchildren: Ellie and Thomas; Oliver and Harry; Hannah and Emily; Eliza and Louie.
