Peter Gilpin

Peter Valentine Purcell Gilpin (né Purcell; 12 December 1858 – 9 November 1929), known as P. P. Gilpin, was an Irish racehorse trainer. He was Champion Trainer in 1904 and his most notable winner was the filly Pretty Polly who won the Fillies Triple Crown in 1904. He also trained Comrade, the winner of the inaugural Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in 1920.

He was born in 1858 at Pau, France, the son of Capt. Peter Valentine Purcell of Halverstown, Carragh, County Kildare, and Agnes Maria Lethbridge, daughter of Sir John Lethbridge, 3rd Baronet. He was Roman Catholic. His father died in 1864 and his mother remarried in 1866 Henry St. John Vaughan Thomas-Le-Marchant.

He was educated at Prior Park College, Bath.

In 1883, he married Amy Mary Louisa, daughter of Capt. Henry Meux-Smith. He and his wife adopted the surname Gilpin as a condition of her inheriting the entailed Hockliffe Grange estate from her uncle Sir Richard Gilpin, 1st Baronet. In the late 1880s, they left Bedfordshire and settled in Ireland, where he began training racehorses while living at Whiteleas near Kildare. The name has remained with the stable since then.

He died in 1929 in Dunshaughlin, County Meath.

Arms