Not to be confused with the village of the same name in Cheshire, Prestbury in Gloucestershire is a residential suburb on the northern outskirts of Cheltenham, in the foothills of Cotswolds. Prestbury Park is known to have existed as long ago as 1136, when it was created by the Bishop of Hereford, and was subsequently used as a medieval deer park and later, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as farmland. The Prestbury Park site was employed, temporarily, as a horse racing venue from 1831 onwards, but it was not until the turn of the twentieth century that it became synonymous with Cheltenham Racecourse.
In 1881, Prestbury Park was bought by William Baring Bingham, who initially used it as his stud farm, before consenting to ‘lend’ the land for the revival of steeplechasing, under National Hunt Rules, in 1898. Four years later, Cheltenham Racecourse staged a forerunner of what would become the National Hunt, or Cheltenham, Festival and the rest, as they say, is history. Nowadays, Prestbury Park is home to three courses, namely the original ‘Old’ Course, the ‘New’ Course, which was used for the first time in 1967, and the idiosyncratic Cross Country Course, which was added in 1995.