Meet the Bunns H&H interviews the team behind the venue
‘Hickstead keeps our family together — we all live on the estate, the cousins have grown up
together; it’s like a commune’
WE are sitting on a balcony overlooking Hickstead’s iconic International
Arena, eerily quiet without the throngs hanging over the ring-rails and packing the stands. The famous fences remain from last month’s Derby meeting, though the bank has been stripped for renovation. Pipelines of sprinklers are dousing the reseeded turf, a gigantic square of verdant green contrasting with the parched, dusty grass elsewhere on the showground.
“It’s getting 30,000 gallons of water a day at the moment,” says Edward Bunn, joint managing director of Hickstead with his sister Lizzie. “We put on nearly three million litres in the build-up to the Derby meeting.”
One thing riders at this month’s Longines FEI Jumping Nations Cup of Great Britain at the BHS Royal International Horse Show (RIHS, 24-29 July) can bank on is tip-top going — in any one of the eight rings. In
2010, the team spent over £650,000 on an all-weather surface underneath the turf in the International Arena, with the result that, as Lizzie says: “Most of the riders would say this is the best grass arena in the world to jump on.”
This year, for the first time, the Longines FEI Nations Cup will feature on the Sunday, rather than Friday — on instruction from the FEI. While Lizzie is concerned about how this will affect entries for the King George V Gold Cup, both Bunns are cautiously optimistic.
“The FEI says that Sundays have been very popular for the Nations Cup at other venues,” Lizzie says. “In La Baule [free entry] they had to turn away 800 spectators. I’m just worried how many people, plus the British riders not on the team, will have gone home — this is a big showground to fill.”
One new class they have introduced to counteract a possible exodus is a seven- and eight-year-old championship on the Sunday morning with a £10,000 prize fund.
“There will be some good young horses,” says Edward. “Especially for foreigners it will be useful to get their young horses familiar with Hickstead.”
And they’re hopeful spectators will flock to the Nations Cup as a stand-alone act.
“It’s the only time the British team compete on home soil and we want everyone to get behind them — especially after the football World Cup,” Lizzie says. “I have a good vibe about them this year — it’s been eight years since their last win here, and I think they can do it this time.”
THE investment in the arena and new championships are just a couple of examples of the ongoing innovations the Bunn siblings have been making since their father, Hickstead founder Douglas Bunn, died in 2009.
“A lot of people thought that when Dad died, we might not be able to carry on, but it was a unanimous decision from the six siblings that are involved, the desire to keep it going,” says Lizzie. “Hickstead keeps our family together — we all live on the estate, the cousins have grown up together; it’s like a commune.
“We’ve made a huge number of improvements; we’ve invested £2m in the showground in the past 10 years. Dad wasn’t willing to invest: ‘If it was all right in the 60s, it’s all right in the 70s and 80s’ — that was his stock answer.
“But he would love what we’ve done. I can hear him in my head: he’d be against change and spending, and then I’d overhear him praising it to someone else, saying, ‘Look what I’ve done’, and I’d just feel quietly satisfied!”
Edward chips in: “The showground does not make money, that’s for sure. We support it with our other businesses commercially, but it’s only going out one pocket and in the other. But it’s our life and we love it — what else would we do? And Hickstead gives so many people a lot of pleasure.”
Recent revamps include a new layout, including a gin bar and Ella’s Bar, in memory of Ella Popely, the young showjumper who died in a car crash in 2016. They introduced a children’s entertainer/magician for the Derby meeting to entice mums with pre-schoolers on a free day out, which proved very popular.
The Bunns have been in this game for decades, but they’re constantly seeking new avenues. They host car shows and other events outside equestrianism, including a concert — and have lately been in negotiation with
Elton John.
“The trouble is they all want it around the same weekends as our horse shows, and they’re the priority,” says Edward. “This is our hallowed turf, and people do a lot more damage to the ground than the horses.”
The big investment for this autumn is enlarging ring three and turning it into an all-weather with water splash, so that they can run arena cross-country in their off-season.
“The past two years we’ve suffered hellish wet weather and have been so close to cancelling shows, so this is an insurance that we can carry on regardless on the sport front — and then in the winter it would make money from cross-country schooling,” says Lizzie. “It’s a £420,000 investment, but it should become a money-spinner.”
THIS quest for innovation is not in reaction to a downturn; Hickstead’s gate has remained constant over the years. This is despite the advent of livestreaming (“It can only increase our audience,” counters Edward), and the continuing retail struggle for those manning the trade stands.
“We’re a big event, in the top five or six in the world — we have around 50,000 people at the RIHS and 3,500 horses,” says Edward. “That doesn’t really change, only by about 5% depending on the weather. We now sell 70% of tickets in advance, with a discount, and it’s just those that open the curtains and see it’s raining that give us fluctuations on the gate.
“Our online sales are going up, and we market Hickstead as the complete family day out. It sounds stereotypical, but the dads have bars, the mums have shopping and there’s top sport and entertainment, too.”
Hickstead seems in a happy place right now. Lizzie does “everything inside; Edward does outside, the logistics and IT”. Their brother John does the accounts, while sister Chloe brings in ideas from travelling the circuit with her husband Shane Breen who, on cue, hacks beneath us on a chestnut, fresh from his monumental win in the Monaco Global Champions Tour grand prix the previous weekend.
“Everyone has an input to varying degrees,” says Lizzie. “Edward’s easy-going and sorts out anyone’s logistical problems — everyone comes to him — while I’m the matriarch and do the nagging. But we’re like-minded and we don’t fall out.”
Douglas Bunn’s legacy looks set to continue into the next generation, too. All six of
Edward and Lizzie’s children have worked for Hickstead during their school holidays. Lizzie’s daughter, trainee osteopath Ellie, is doing her fourth summer season as showjumping secretary. Edward’s daughter Lucy is stable jockey to the Funnells and produced Derby winner Billy Buckingham, while his son William is the new showground manager, being primed to take on Edward’s role.
“I just need to find someone to take over from me, and then we can both retire,” jokes Lizzie.
Hickstead’s future may be in safe hands, but the current directors both give the impression they have plenty of unfinished business.