There’s a photo of my nan at Ascot from sometime in the seventies. She’s wearing an enormous hat and laughing at something off camera, and she looks completely in her element. She went every year for about two decades and when I asked her once what she loved about it she said it was the only place in England where everything happened exactly as it was supposed to. I’ve thought about that a lot since. It’s a strange thing to say about a horse race but she wasn’t wrong.
If you grew up in the UK, you probably absorbed some version of Ascot through osmosis without ever consciously learning about it. The hats, the carriages, the Royal Family waving from the procession, it’s just sort of in the background of being British in a way that’s hard to explain to someone from elsewhere. What surprises most people when they look into it is how long it’s been going on and how little the important parts have really changed.
The whole thing started in 1711 because Queen Anne went for a ride. She was passing through Berkshire, spotted a stretch of open land about 25 miles outside London and apparently decided on the spot that it would be perfect for horses to race on. That was basically the entire origin story. A racecourse was built, the first meeting happened later that same year and the opening race, called Her Majesty’s Plate, came with a prize of 100 guineas which was serious money at the time. Not a bad legacy for what was essentially a decision made on horseback.
The Royal Family never really stepped back from it after that. Royal Ascot in June has been a fixture in the monarchy’s calendar for centuries and still is today. The procession that opens each day, where the King and senior royals arrive down the track in horse drawn carriages, is one of those traditions that has barely changed and somehow doesn’t feel dated because of it. There’s something about watching it in person that’s genuinely quite moving even if you went in feeling fairly cynical about the whole thing.
The dress code is where Ascot gets a reputation for being intimidating and honestly it’s not entirely undeserved. The Royal Enclosure in particular has rules that are more specific than people expect, morning suits for men, formal dresses and hats for women, and they do actually enforce them. First timers sometimes get caught out assuming that smart is smart and it’ll be fine. It isn’t always fine. That said, the fashion side of Ascot has grown into something genuinely exciting over the years. Designers, milliners, stylists, everyone treats it as a moment. The Royal Ascot Outfits that appear in the papers every June get discussed almost as seriously as the racing results.
The racecourse itself went through a big overhaul in 2006. The grandstand was essentially rebuilt and the facilities were modernised significantly while somehow keeping enough of the original character that it didn’t end up feeling like any other modern venue. It now hosts around 26 meetings a year covering both flat and jump racing, though Royal Ascot in June is obviously the one that gets all the attention.
The town of Ascot itself is fairly small and probably wouldn’t be on anyone’s radar without the racecourse. It sits close to Windsor Great Park, surrounded by the kind of Berkshire and Surrey villages that estate agents describe as highly sought after. It’s popular with people who work in London and want a bit of countryside without giving up easy rail access, which is a very specific type of person but there are apparently quite a lot of them in that part of the world.
What’s genuinely remarkable about Ascot is that it has been going for over three hundred years and still feels relevant. Not relevant in a desperately trying to modernise kind of way, just actually relevant. People still want to go, still plan their outfits months in advance, still get genuinely excited about it. Queen Anne would probably find the hat situation quite entertaining but the horses going fast, that bit she’d recognise immediately.
Tony Jimenez