Ridden by Johnny Mulligan, who works in Clinghan’s Banbridge yard each morning, Ashburton won the ridden display on a score of 106, with judge Catherine Woods writing at the end of her sheet: “That is how a four-year-old should go.”

In common with most others in the class, the mare jumped clear and scored well enough with all three suitability and potential judges to claim the class ahead of Mary Bolger’s A Guidam M gelding Kilcannon Merlin (Jason Higgins) and Willows Sport Horses’ Willows Bravo Flight (Daisy Duggan), a bay gelding by the Cavalier Royale stallion FSS Correlli Bravo.

Clinghan purchased his winner last year from neighbour Gordan Cowan, who bred her out of the Tax Trends mare Cheryville Sophia. According to Cowan, Ashburton shares the same grandam as last year’s supreme hunter champion at Dublin, Lyndsey Wallace’s Amiro M gelding Redemption Ground. This is also the family of the good show broodmare, Cosmo Girl (by Limmerick).

“My father Jack went to Castleblayney Mart one Saturday and came home with a mare of unrecorded breeding that we called Cherryville Grandeur,” said the Banbridge breeder. “The next day she dropped a filly foal who was Redemption Ground’s dam, Cherryville Splendour. Cherryville Sophia was her next foal.

“I’m delighted to hear that Brian’s filly won down in Wexford. To tell you the truth, I’d done nothing with her and she was just running around the fields until he bought her. I’m getting out of horses and back into cattle. My father was the horsey man and I just went along with things. I’m down to just four horses, one of whom is a broodmare, and am just saying bye bye to it all.”