‘Look After The Land And The Land Will Look After You’: Luke Lillingston on Life at Mount Coote Stud

[Wandering Eyes]

It is not just the horses who move fast in the world of racing. The winds of fashion, especially when it comes to stallions, are ever changing. All the while the years gallop on, and a filly you can still picture in the heat haze of an Ascot summer is suddenly the third dam of this year's champion.

Drive in through the gates of Mount Coote Stud, however, and it feels as though time is standing still. Set in the famed Maigue Valley where a rich seam of Limerick limestone has spawned good horse after great horse after champion, Mount Coote, behind its stone walls, is a world within a world where life is conducted in an unhurried quiet.

Three generations of the Lillingston family have presided over these lush 500 acres since 1938, succeeding another famous racing family, the Greenalls. It was here that Sir Gilbert Greenall, the first Lord Daresbury, bred his 1921 Oaks winner Love In Idleness. In the intervening century, much has changed while much has stayed the same.

Luke and Tabitha Lillingston are at the helm now, with Luke having been called home in 2000 to take up the reins from his father Alan, one of the most celebrated horsemen of his generation, who died in 2014. It had been Lillingston's grandfather, also called Luke, who bought the property in the first place, if not unseen, then certainly unchecked. 

“He stayed here once and remembered the view from the bedroom window. He thought this was would do for him and he didn't even walk the land,” says Lillingston. 

That view, with its backdrop of soft hills, would be enough to seduce anyone with the means to do so into taking on a country estate which already had several centuries of history to its name. Tragically, only a handful of years later, Captain Lillingston lost his life in the battle of the Falaise gap, one of so many to fall in Normandy. His dream has been lovingly continued by his family.

Alan Lillingston had lost both of his parents by the age of 15, but with the support of some knowledgeable guardians, friends and family, he went on to a riding career which included him becoming the first amateur to win the Champion Hurdle in 1963 aboard Winning Fair for trainer and owner George Spencer, the father of Jamie. He also claimed a team gold medal for Ireland in the 1979 European eventing championships. Hand in hand with his glorious exploits in the saddle, Alan became a sales consignor of some repute. 

Lillingston says of his father, “The first year that he took a yearling from here to Newmarket was 1958. In 2008, we had a party at the Jockey Club rooms to celebrate my parents selling horses at Tattersalls for 50 consecutive years.”

 

The view that seduced Luke Lillingston Sr in the 1930s

 

There would surely have been immense pride in Alan witnessing, seven months before his passing, Mount Coote Stud selling Immortal Verse at the same venue for 4.7 million gns. It is a broodmare record which still stands, and that vast expenditure on the dual Group 1 winner, who was bred nearby at the renowned nursery that is Kilfrush Stud, has subsequently been justified. For Coolmore, in partnership with American owner-breeder Charles Noelle, she has produced Classic winner Henri Matisse (Wootton Bassett), Group 1 winner Tenebrism (Caravaggio) and Group 2 winner Statuette (Justify). Henri Matisse is a new recruit to Castlehyde Stud this season. 

“When I was living and working in New York for George Harris, I met and got to know Peter Bance. When Charlie was buying some serious mares, Peter rang me up and said, I've got an old pal that wants to buy a proper mare,” Lillingston recalls of his association with Noelle, who, with John Moores under their Merriebelle Stable banner, bought all the stock of Kilfrush Stud in 2013. 

“It was just timing, because I knew that [Kilfrush's owner] Monsieur Binet wasn't well. I've known [former manager] Brendan Hayes for a long time and I asked if Immortal Verse could be bought. We only just beat Coolmore to it – usually you finish second to them, but on this particular occasion, we got lucky. We bought her and she boarded at the National Stud to be covered by Dansili, and then we prepped her for the sale – and that was an amazing moment.”

Lillingston is naturally positively disposed towards her young stallion son but has a point when he says of Henri Matisse, “There are all sorts of reasons why he might be a good stallion, but that's the linchpin, the fact that she was so good, and she could accelerate. That's real class in the thoroughbred, when they can accelerate.”

Mount Coote Stud graduates have made their way to far more bustling corners of the world. The Hong Kong Derby winners Sound Print and Che Sera Sera were both raised there, as were Sydney Cup winner Shraaoh and Caulfield Cup winner All The Good. 

Lane's End Farm's Will Farish bred Charleston Rag at Mount Coote, and she was one of two GI Frizette Stakes winners to emanate from those paddocks along with Balletto.

The same is true of Trevor and Libby Harris's Oaks winner Love Divine, who later found fame as the dam of St Leger winner Sixties Icon. Prowess, who produced another Oaks winner, Talent, was a boarder there for Mark Dixon, the nephew of Dick Hollingsworth. 

Arguably one of the most important of all graduates was the Molecomb Stakes winner Hatta, one of three initial thoroughbred purchases for Sheikh Mohammed Al Maktoum from the Mount Coote draft at Tattersalls in 1976. She became his first winner the following June at Brighton. The rest, as they say, is history. 

Only a few months after Hatta's debut, history was also in the making when Alan Lillingston and his great friend Jocelyn Hambro sold a yearling filly by Rarity to Richard Galpin on behalf of Egon Weinfeld. She was indeed rare, and, named One In A Million, she won the 1,000 Guineas and Coronation Stakes of 1979. To this day she remains a cornerstone of the Weinfeld family's Meon Valley Stud.

 

The Mount Coote and Merriebelle teams with Immortal Verse | Tattersalls

 

More recently, Dreamloper has been a Group 1 star for Mount Coote Stud. The daughter of Lope De Vega was bred by client Olivia Hoare, who bought her dam Livia's Dream from the Lillingstons and Mark Dixon. She hails from that same celebrated Hollingsworth family of Bireme as the aforementioned Talent. Along with the four-time Group winner Dreamloper, Livia's Dream has also produced last season's G2 Park Hill Fillies' Stakes winner Santorini Star (Golden Horn), and this feat was followed by sale-ring success for her weanling daughter by New Bay, who, consigned by Mount Coote,  topped the Goffs November Foal Sale at €650,000.

No stallions remain at Mount Coote, which was once home to Tudor Melody before his sale to the National Stud, but echoes of those days linger on. 

“I bought a filly that won on Boxing Day,” says Lillingston. “Stop me if I'm going off on too many tangents, because I do a lot of what Tabs describes as moving sideways.” It is true that his telling of the history of his family farm could fill a book, but it would be a very enjoyable one. Regrettably we have more limited space here, but we can report that the George Boughey-trained Green Dame (Lucky Vega) has just arrived in Killmallock 60-odd years after her fourth dam Enticement resided there. 

“Enticement was one of my father's early mares and she had a daughter called Lady Hester, who was by Native Prince, who stood here,” Lillingston adds. “We've been longing to get back into the family and I sent a message to Anthony Bromley saying, if Simon Munir and Isaac Souede are ever interested in selling [Green Dame], please let me know. They were, and we bought her.”

Tangents are part and parcel of Lillingston's working life as, along with running Mount Coote Stud, he is heavily involved in Hot To Trot Racing and Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds with Sam Hoskins, whom he credits for doing much of the work for the successful syndicates. Having had experience with the Curragh Bloodstock Agency and with George Harris in America before setting up on his own in his younger days Lillingston has never quite been able to let go of the ties that bind, and he runs his own agency still with Charlie Dee.

“Everybody needs a lucky break and my lucky break was when Anthony Stroud said to me, 'Boy, you ought to come and work for me at the sales.' So I did and I loved it,” he recalls. 

Dad's plan for me was to do a season at Coolmore and then go into the city for two years. Anthony then moved from the Curragh Bloodstock Agency to set up Sheikh Mohammed's racing office, and so they were looking to replace him in Ireland.

“I was mucking out boxes one day at Coolmore, and somebody said, 'Can you take a telephone call?' And it was Johnny Harrington asking of I would be interested in the job. So I spent three years with them and it was a wonderful company to work for. I was very wet behind the ears, lucky to be on the team. You could be at a point-to-point in County Cork one day and on your way on an aeroplane to Australia the following day and back again.”

Later, his experience with Harris, who ran Heron Bloodstock with Tim Bulwer-Long and John Corbett, would take him to Kentucky. 

“I think that was the time when my interest in pedigrees, which had been there for a long time, really took off,” he says. “And of course, all the best stallions in the world all stood in Kentucky at that time.

“Going to Claiborne and seeing Secretariat and Nijinsky, Danzig, Mr Prospector, and so on. Then you went down to Gainesway and there was Riverman, Lyphard and Green Dancer. And across the road at Spendthrift there was Seattle Slew and Caro. It was wonderful.

“Northern Dancer was alive and going strong. That was rather special seeing him because he was about 15.1, but built like that,” his arms widen as he speaks. “Incredible horse.”

 

Celebrating Henri Matisse's Poule d'Essai des Poulains victory

 

By the end of 2000, Alan Lillingston was ready to have the eldest of his four children back at the ranch, so to speak. 

“I'm very lucky to have had a pretty seamless handover from Dad to me over quite a number of years. During that time I got to learn about the farm and how to farm it and how he felt it should be farmed,” says Lillingston. 

“We are lucky to have a lovely place and to have very good land, but you have to look after it. Dad always used to say if you look after the land, the land will look after you. He was absolutely right. And looking after it means not abusing it. It's wet land, so if you start putting too many horses on the land here, you'll get into trouble.”

He adds of his neighbours, “There are some phenomenal breeders in this area. Paul McCartan was here for six years and my father said he was different class.”

Paul and Marie McCartan's Ballyphilip Stud falls within the Maigue Valley, which is part of an area more broadly known as the Golden Vale. Among the studs included in that valley are Croom House, Rathmore, Roundhill, Manister House, Ballyvolane, Kilfrush, Knocktoran, and Martinstown. Names to conjure with. 

Though it is tempting to revel in the past, Lillingston spends plenty of time looking to the future. A quarter of a century since his return, it is not yet time to pass on the responsibility for the place to his children Hugh and Lara, who are both studying in the UK, but that day will come. Hugh is already following a family tradition in being a winning point-to-point rider, and his interest in the wider business is evident.

“Racing and breeding only thrives because people are enthusiastic. I do love it and I think being very busy is better than being underutilised,” says Lillingston of his various roles.

“The key to making all of that possible is working with good people, and I'm really lucky, both here at Mount Coote, and in Hot To Trot and Kennet Valley, and with the bloodstock agency, to work with people with such passion and integrity, otherwise nothing happens.”

 

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