The origins of the Cheltenham Festival lie in the so-called National Hunt Meeting and its most prestigious race, the National Hunt Chase. The National Hunt Chase, which is still run at the Cheltenham Festival, was inaugurated at Market Harborough in 1860 and, thereafter, staged at various racecourses up and down the country for the next 40 years or so. The National Hunt Chase was actually run at Cheltenham in 1861, 1904 and 1905, but was run at Warwick in 1902, 1903 and 1906-1910, before finding a permanent home at Prestbury Park in 1911.
The Steeplechase Company (Cheltenham) Limited, under the auspices of Chairman, Frederick Cathcart, petitioned the National Hunt Committee to make the National Hunt Meeting a perennial fixture at Prestbury Park, to be staged in March, as it had been during its itinerant years. The regulatory body agreed and, thus, the Cheltenham Festival – apparently, the term ‘Festival’ was first coined in the Warwick Advertiser in 1907 – was inaugurated, as a two-day fixture, in 1911.