Horseplay Sculpture Trail, Newmarket
HORSEPLAY: STRATEGY, SYMBOL AND COMMUNITY IN CARVED FORM
Newmarket Chess Sculpture Trail, July 2025
Across Newmarket this summer, eight carved wood sculptures have appeared. They sit quietly in streets and green spaces, shaped as familiar chess pieces—King, Queen, Bishop, Knight, Rook, and three Pawns—but layered with meanings drawn from the town’s past and present.
Commissioned by Discover Newmarket, supported by Love Newmarket BID and the Town Council, Horseplay is a public art trail grounded in symbolism, storytelling, and place.
FORMAL STRUCTURE, LOCAL DETAIL
The chessboard gave us the structure. Within it, we explored how each piece—its role, its movement, its story—could reflect something of Newmarket. We worked with the visual language of heraldry and horse racing. Not as explicit reference, but as texture: stables, strategies, bloodlines, hierarchy, legacy. These became the carved elements within each sculpture. The sculpture aesthetic itself was drawn from the historic architecture and design aspects of the town.
Each piece carries an 18-character motto—phrases like Sovereignoftheturf, Guardianoflegacy and (Rob's favourite) Dadwasfasttoo. Together they speak to competition, identity, and care. Race horses are named with wit and the limit of 18 characters and so this gave the pieces even more local resonance.
COMMUNITY AS AUTHOR
The three Pawns were designed through public workshops. We asked school groups and community members to create symbols that represented themselves: not coats of arms, but personal icons. These were redrawn, adapted, and then carved into the final sculptures.
It means that across the trail, there are forms shaped directly by local people. An acorn. A maple leaf. A comfort string. Not generic motifs, but marks of personal meaning made public.
Read about their stories here:
https://www.eadt.co.uk/news/25327186.newmarket-chess-sculptures-go-show-ahead-new-trail/
A MATERIAL LANGUAGE
We work in timber. For this trail, we used UK-grown Larch and Douglas Fir—durable, textured, appropriate. The surfaces have been scorched and stained so as to fit the grace and historical feel of Newmarket. The carvings are there to be read slowly with each sculpture having a QR code linking to further information: a digital layer for those who want it. But the work stands on its own terms.
This is the interpretation website:
https://discovernewmarket.co.uk/latest_news/newmarket-chess-sculpture-trail/
THE TRAIL
The trail launched in July 2025 as part of Newmarket’s Summer of Play programme, with a live carving demonstration at the National Horseracing Museum. Over the holidays, the sculptures are being discovered and rediscovered—used as landmarks, meeting points, conversation starters.
They are not installations to be passed through, but pieces to be returned to.
THANK YOU
Our thanks to the commissioning partners, to the schools and individuals who contributed designs, and to the people of Newmarket for sharing their stories and allowing us to shape something from them.
Horseplay now sits across the town, embedded in its rhythm and daily life. It’s not just a trail of chess pieces. It’s a trail of symbols—some personal, some collective—inviting reflection, strategy, and pause.
