THE brass tap appeared most emblematic as I finished up a two-and-a-half-hour walk around the Newmarket yard with Sir Mark Prescott. A small, beautifully polished piece of stables’ infrastructure; shining quietly in the corner, a beacon to the practical, inadvertently polished by a thousand hands as they watered and hosed-down the thoroughbreds of Heath House for nigh on 200 years.

Prescott is the 13th trainer to operate from the deeply atmospheric yard, everything quiet and seemingly in its place since it was built in 1832.