Grand National Fences: Names, Heights and Order of All 16
Every one of the Grand National fences at Aintree in running order, with names, published heights, ditches and drops, and how the obstacles have been altered.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Grand National23 min read
- Fences on the course
- 16
- Jumps in the race
- 30
- Tallest, the Chair
- 5ft 2in
- Lowest, the Water Jump
- 2ft 6in
The lowest fence on the Grand National course is two feet six inches high and has a stretch of water behind it. The tallest is five feet two, with a ditch in front and ground on the far side that is higher than the ground the horse takes off from. They stand next to each other in front of the stands at Aintree, on the edge of Liverpool, and a horse meets each of them exactly once.
There are sixteen fences on the course. Fourteen are jumped on both circuits of the race and those two, the Chair and the Water Jump, on the first circuit only, which makes thirty jumps. Five of the sixteen carry names: Becher's Brook, Foinavon, the Canal Turn, Valentine's Brook and the Chair, with the Water Jump usually counted as a sixth. Heights published by the Jockey Club, which owns the course, run from 4ft 6in for the plain fences at the start and end of the circuit to 5ft 2in for the Chair, and the full list follows in running order.
All sixteen Grand National fences in order, with heights
The table gives each fence its number on both circuits, since racing people refer to them either way: the Canal Turn is "the eighth" going out and "the twenty-fourth" coming back. Heights are those in the Jockey Club's course guide, with the eleventh shown at the figure announced when it was lowered for 2024.
| First circuit | Second circuit | Name | Type | Published height |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 17 | Unnamed | Plain | 4ft 6in |
| 2 | 18 | Unnamed | Plain | 4ft 7in |
| 3 | 19 | Unnamed, known to some as Westhead | Open ditch | 5ft |
| 4 | 20 | Unnamed | Plain | 4ft 10in |
| 5 | 21 | Unnamed | Plain | 5ft |
| 6 | 22 | Becher's Brook | Brook and drop on landing | 4ft 10in |
| 7 | 23 | Foinavon | Plain | 4ft 6in |
| 8 | 24 | Canal Turn | Plain, followed by a sharp turn | 5ft |
| 9 | 25 | Valentine's Brook | Brook on landing | 5ft |
| 10 | 26 | Unnamed | Plain | 5ft |
| 11 | 27 | Unnamed | Open ditch | 4ft 10in |
| 12 | 28 | Unnamed | Ditch on landing | 5ft |
| 13 | 29 | Unnamed | Plain | 4ft 7in |
| 14 | 30 | Unnamed | Plain | 4ft 6in |
| 15 | Not jumped | The Chair | Open ditch, raised landing | 5ft 2in |
| 16 | Not jumped | Water Jump | Water on landing | 2ft 6in |
One caution about the numbers. Published dimensions for a couple of these fences differ by an inch or two between sources, the third being quoted at 4ft 10in in some places and 5ft in others, and Becher's Brook at 5ft in some and 4ft 10in in the Jockey Club's own list. That is partly because a fence dressed with loose spruce does not have a hard top edge to measure. The order, the types and the names are not in doubt.
The shape of that chart is the shape of the course. The circuit begins and ends with its smallest plain fences, the stiffest run comes in the middle between the fifth and the twelfth, and the two extremes are saved for the stands. How the race is run around them, from the standing start to the judge, is on a separate page about how the National itself works.
- 16Fences on the course
- 14Jumped on both circuits
- 2Jumped once only
- 30Jumps in the race
Fences on the Grand National course and how often each is jumped in the race.
What a Grand National fence is made of
Strip the green off one and what remains is a core of flexible plastic strands, sometimes called plastic birch, standing upright in a frame. The spruce is woven into and laid over that core, and at least fourteen inches of it sits loose above the solid part.
It was not always so. Until the 2013 race the centre of each fence was a rigid timber frame with wooden stakes, and a horse that hit one hard low down met something that did not move. After the fatalities of 2011 and 2012 Aintree rebuilt twelve of the sixteen fences with the new cores during 2012, in time for the following April. The height stayed the same. What changed was what happened when a horse got in too close and ploughed through the base: the plastic gives and springs back.
The spruce itself is Sitka or Norway spruce, cut in the Lake District and brought down to Merseyside by road. The Jockey Club's guide puts the quantity at sixteen lorry-loads and the time needed to dress the course at three weeks. Every fence is built up by hand, the branches packed tight at the bottom and looser towards the top, so that from the take-off side it presents a solid green wall and from above it has a soft fringe.
That fringe is knocked about in every race. After the Foxhunters' on the Thursday of the April meeting and the Topham on the Friday, the fence builders go round replacing what has been kicked out, and a fence that looked ragged on television on Friday afternoon is square again by Saturday. The same happens between the first and second circuits of the National only in the sense that nothing can be done: the twenty-second fence the runners meet is Becher's as the first circuit left it.
The Water Jump is the exception to the spruce rule in appearance, being a low fence with a wide pool beyond it, and it stands on the site of the stone wall that horses jumped in the first years of the race.
Why they ride differently from park fences
A regulation steeplechase fence on a British park course, the kind used at Cheltenham, Sandown or on Aintree's own Mildmay track, is made of birch, must be at least 4ft 6in high under the BHA's requirements, and is stiff from top to bottom. A horse that brushes the top of one is slowed. The background on those ordinary obstacles is in our comparison of fences and hurdles in jump racing.
National fences differ in four ways, and only one of them is height.
They are wider from front to back. The published thickness runs to around three feet for a plain fence and much more where a ditch or a brook is involved, so a horse has to stretch as well as rise.
The top is forgiving. Because the upper fourteen inches or more is loose spruce, a horse can take a slice out of it and keep its balance. Experienced Aintree jockeys talk about letting horses "brush through the top", and a good National jumper often learns after a fence or two that it need not clear the whole height. That is why the published figures overstate the effort involved, and why a bold but slightly careless jumper can do better here than round a stiff park course.
They look different. A park fence is a dark brown slab with an orange or white board at its foot. A National fence is a green hedge, and to a horse seeing one for the first time the shape, the colour and the sheer breadth across the course are all new. Take-off boards along the base give the animal a ground line from which to judge its stride, and after the 2011 review those boards were raised from nine inches to fourteen to make that line easier to read.
The ground on the far side is not always where the horse expects it. This was once true of many of the fences and is now true of few. Landing areas at the first, the fifth, the eleventh and the thirteenth have all been levelled or smoothed in the changes made since 2011, leaving Becher's Brook as the one fence where a drop is kept as part of the test.
Fences one to five and the run to the first
The first fence is among the smallest on the course and has historically been one of the most troublesome. The reason is pace. A big field sets off with every rider wanting a position, the horses are fresh, and for most of the race's history there was a long gallop across the Melling Road before anything had to be jumped. They arrived going too fast at an obstacle of a kind most had never seen.
Three changes have been aimed at that. The landing side of the first, which used to fall away slightly, was levelled before the 2012 race. The start was moved forward in 2013. And for 2024 the fence itself was moved 60 yards closer to the start, with a standing start introduced at the same time, so that the field has less room to build up speed. The effect on the official trip is discussed in how long the Grand National is.
The second is a plain fence an inch higher. The third is the first open ditch: a ditch on the take-off side with a guard rail, then the fence. A horse has to stand off and jump out over the gap, and one that puts in a short stride and gets underneath it has nowhere to go. Some at Aintree call this fence Westhead, after a man who built the fences, though the name is seldom heard in commentary.
The fourth was cut from 5ft to 4ft 10in after the 2011 review. One of the two fatal falls in that year's race had happened there. The fifth, at 5ft, is plain, and its landing side was levelled in 2013. These two are ridden with the next one in mind. Jockeys use the fourth and fifth to settle on the part of the course they want to be on for the sixth, since a late change of line going into a fence with a drop is how collisions happen.
The sixth is Becher's Brook. Its drop, its brook, the captain it is named after and thirty years of alterations are set out on the Becher's Brook page.
In 2013, the first year of the flexible cores and the shorter run from the start, the whole field of forty cleared the first seven fences. Nobody watching could remember that happening before.
Foinavon, the seventh and twenty-third
At 4ft 6in this is as small as any fence out in the country, a plain obstacle set on the left-hand bend between Becher's and the Canal Turn. It ought to be the least memorable jump of the thirty. It has a name because of what happened there on 8 April 1967.
The field was on its second circuit. Popham Down, who had lost his rider at the very first fence and had been galloping loose ever since, was up with the leaders at the twenty-third and, instead of jumping it, swerved to his right along the take-off side. He struck Rutherfords and put that horse's jockey on the floor. The runners behind had no room and no time. Horses refused, fell, turned sideways and ran up and down in front of the fence, and within a few seconds almost every horse still in the race had been stopped.
Foinavon was not almost every horse. He was so far behind that his rider, John Buckingham, could see the chaos before he reached it. Buckingham steered wide to the outside, found a gap, and popped over. Foinavon was the only runner to get across at the first attempt. The television commentary of those few seconds by Michael O'Hehir, who picked the horse out of the confusion as he came through, is among the most replayed in the sport.
By the time other jockeys had caught their horses, remounted and got them over, he was a long way clear. Seventeen riders remounted in all. Honey End, ridden by Josh Gifford, made up a great deal of ground and still finished fifteen lengths behind. Eighteen horses completed the course, a good many of them with riders who had been on the ground a minute earlier.
Aintree named the fence after the winner in 1984. Two things about the episode could not be repeated now. Remounting during a race has been banned under the Rules of Racing since 2009, so a rider who is unseated in a pile-up is out. And the course has since been widened so that a fence with an obstruction on it can be bypassed. The loose horse is a hazard no rule has removed.
The Canal Turn: a fence followed by a right angle
The eighth is a 5ft plain fence. What makes it one of the named fences is the ground behind it, because within a stride or two of landing the course turns left through very nearly ninety degrees. Straight ahead, beyond the rail, is the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, which gives the fence and the next four their collective name.
A horse that jumps the Canal Turn square on and lands running straight has to be hauled round the bend and loses several lengths to anything that took a tighter line. So the riders do not jump it square. They approach from the wide outside and angle across the fence from right to left, jumping it on the diagonal, so that the horse lands already facing down the canal side. With a full field doing the same thing at once, the inside of the fence becomes very crowded, and a horse jumping straight on the inner can be cut across by three or four coming in at an angle.
It is geometry more than size that causes the trouble here, which is why unseated riders are as common as falls. A jockey leaning left for the turn on a horse that jumps right is off balance at the worst moment.
The pile-up of 1928 and the ditch that went
Until 1928 the Canal Turn had a ditch in front of it. That year Easter Hero, one of the best horses in the race, came to grief at the ditch and was left stranded across the take-off. The horses behind could not get past. Most of the field of forty-two was stopped there, only a handful got through with their riders still in the saddle, and so few of those survived the rest of the course that only two finished, the winner Tipperary Tim and a remounted Billy Barton. The ditch was filled in afterwards and has not been replaced.
The fence produced a smaller version of the same thing in 2001, on heavy ground, when the loose horse Paddy's Return ran along the take-off side and stopped a group of runners. In 2015 it was bypassed on the second circuit.
Valentine's Brook and the fences along the canal
The ninth was simply the Second Brook until 1840. In that year's race a horse named Valentine is said to have reached it, tried to pull himself up, and then twisted over it in a way that left onlookers convinced he had landed hind legs first. He went on to finish third. The story has the neatness of legend and should be read as "reputed", but the name has been on the fence ever since.
Valentine's is 5ft high with a brook of 5ft 6in on the landing side. It resembles Becher's in type and is less severe in practice, because the ground beyond it does not fall away to the same extent. Horses meet it immediately after the scramble of the Canal Turn, often while riders are still getting them balanced, and a horse that has been pushed wide on the turn can find itself meeting the fence on a poor stride.
Three more follow in a straight line beside the canal.
The tenth is a plain fence of 5ft, the nearest thing to a breather on this side of the course.
The eleventh is the second of the open ditches, with a six-foot ditch on the take-off side. It was at this fence that Golden Miller, the winner of 1934, came to grief when he returned a year later. As part of the changes announced for 2024 it was lowered by two inches, from 5ft to 4ft 10in, and the ground on the landing side was levelled to reduce a drop.
The twelfth reverses the arrangement: a 5ft fence with a ditch of 5ft 6in on the landing side. A horse cannot see that ditch on the approach. It has to jump out far enough to clear it without knowing it is there, which is a matter of how boldly it has been jumping up to that point. Tired or cautious horses that pop the fence short land in or on the edge of it.
After the twelfth the field crosses the Melling Road again, near the Anchor Bridge, and leaves the country behind.
The thirteenth and fourteenth, which become the last two
On paper these are nothing. Two plain fences of 4ft 7in and 4ft 6in on the racecourse proper, the wide stretch of turf shared with the Mildmay course, with the landing side of the thirteenth smoothed before the 2013 race. On the first circuit horses skip over them with the Chair in view. A jockey's main concern is to get a clear sight of what comes next.
On the second circuit they are the twenty-ninth and thirtieth, the last two fences of the Grand National, and they are a different proposition. There is a very long run from the twelfth to the thirteenth, long enough for the race to change shape completely, and by the time the leaders arrive they have travelled nearly four miles. A horse at the end of its stamina does not pick its feet up. The small fences that cost nothing first time catch horses that have jumped twenty-eight of the big ones.
Riders treat the stretch before them as a place to take stock. With the Melling Road behind and two fences to go, a jockey can see who is still travelling easily and who is being pushed along, and the decision about when to commit is usually made here and not at the last. Go too soon and the run-in finds the horse out. Wait too long and a rival with a cleaner jump at the twenty-ninth has gone beyond reach.
The last fence has decided the race more than once. In 1928 Billy Barton, the only horse still with the winner, fell there. Other leaders have blundered through it and been caught on the run-in, because a mistake at the thirtieth is followed by 494 yards in which to pay for it.
There is also the matter of the line. From the last fence the runners do not go straight on, since straight on leads to the Chair. They are guided by the rail to the Elbow and the finishing straight, and a horse that jumps the last on the outside has further to go.
The Chair and the Water Jump, met once only
In front of the stands, at the end of the first circuit, the tallest fence on the course and the lowest stand a short gallop apart.
The Chair is 5ft 2in, has an open ditch on the take-off side, and is the one fence on the course where the landing side is higher than the take-off, by about six inches. It is also noticeably narrower across the track than the fences out in the country, so a field that has been spread right across the course has to funnel in. Its name comes from the seat once occupied beside it by a distance judge. The published width of its ditch varies between five and six feet depending on which document you read, and the details, together with its history, are on the page devoted to the Chair.
The Water Jump is 2ft 6in of fence with a broad expanse of water on the landing side. It asks a horse to jump long, not high. Falls there are rare. It dates, according to the Jockey Club, from 1841, when it replaced the stone wall of the earliest Nationals.
The pairing is theatre. Spectators in the stands see the field arrive at racing pace, bunched after the plain fences, and take on the most imposing fence on the course followed at once by the most photogenic. The Chair has had pile-ups of its own, the most notable in 1979, when loose horses cut across the field and a group of runners was put out at once, most of them brought down and not fallers in their own right. The Water Jump usually contributes nothing worse than a splash from a trailing hind leg.
Both are omitted on the second circuit for a reason of layout and not of mercy. They stand on the line the field takes on the first circuit, and the run-in passes to one side of them. Having jumped the thirtieth, the field bears right, leaves the Chair and the Water Jump on its left and takes the Elbow on the way to the winning post. A race that jumped them twice would need a different finish.
Ditches and drops compared
Nine of the sixteen fences are plain: a fence with level ground on both sides. The other seven each add a complication, and it helps to sort them by where the complication lies.
- Plain9fences
- Open ditch on take-off3fences
- Brook or ditch on landing3fences
- Water jump1fences
Becher's Brook, Valentine's Brook and the twelfth are grouped as fences with a brook or ditch on the landing side.
Show the numbers
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Plain | 9fences |
| Open ditch on take-off | 3fences |
| Brook or ditch on landing | 3fences |
| Water jump | 1fences |
| Fence | Where the ditch or water lies | Ground on landing | What it asks of the horse |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 and 19 | Ditch on take-off side | Level | To stand off and jump out over a gap it can see |
| 6 and 22, Becher's Brook | Brook on landing side | Lower than take-off | To land steeply and stay balanced |
| 9 and 25, Valentine's Brook | Brook on landing side | Close to level | To reach for extra width |
| 11 and 27 | Ditch on take-off side | Levelled for 2024 | To stand off at a stage when it may be tiring |
| 12 and 28 | Ditch on landing side | Level beyond the ditch | To jump out over a gap it cannot see |
| 15, the Chair | Ditch on take-off side | Higher than take-off | To gain height as well as width |
| 16, the Water Jump | Water on landing side | Level | To jump long over a low fence |
An open ditch punishes the horse that gets too close. With a plain fence a horse can "fiddle", putting in a short stride and popping over from underneath. With a ditch in front, getting underneath is impossible, because underneath is the ditch. The horse has to see a longer stride and commit to it.
A ditch or brook behind the fence punishes the opposite fault. The careful jumper that clears the fence neatly and comes down steeply may drop its hind legs into the gap. These fences reward a bold, flat trajectory.
A drop, of which Becher's is now the only real example, changes the landing itself. The horse is in the air for longer than it anticipated and meets the ground at a steeper angle, with its weight pitched forward. The Chair does the reverse. The ground comes up to meet the horse sooner than expected, which can jar it and pitch a rider up its neck.
The other races over the Grand National fences
The spruce fences are jumped in public on only a few days a year, in five races.
| Race | Meeting | Approximate distance | Fences jumped |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grand National | April | 4 miles 2½ furlongs | 30 |
| Topham Chase | April | 2 miles 5 furlongs | 18 |
| Foxhunters' Chase | April | 2 miles 5 furlongs | 18 |
| Becher Chase | Early winter | 3 miles 2 furlongs | 21 |
| Grand Sefton Chase | Early winter | 2 miles 5 furlongs | 18 |
The brief answer to which fences these races leave out is that, on the usual start positions, they leave out none. One circuit contains sixteen fences, and the three races over two miles five furlongs each jump eighteen. They start on the racecourse proper before the thirteenth, so the field jumps the thirteenth and fourteenth, then the Chair and the Water Jump, then goes out into the country over fences one to twelve and comes back over the thirteenth and fourteenth again to finish. In those races the Chair is the third fence and Becher's Brook the tenth. Start positions can be moved, so that numbering is the recent pattern and not a law.
The Becher Chase is longer and its twenty-one fences work on the same principle, with the start further back so that more of the circuit is covered twice. In none of them is any fence jumped more than twice.
The Topham is a handicap for professionals on the Friday of the April meeting, and the Foxhunters', on the Thursday, is restricted to amateur riders. The Becher Chase, first run in 1992, and the Grand Sefton, an old Aintree race revived in 2003, take place early in the winter and are watched closely as trials. A horse that has jumped round in one of them has answered the first question anyone asks about a National entry.
What these races share with the National is the fences. What they lack is the second circuit, and with it the test of jumping Becher's and the Canal Turn at the end of three and a half miles. More on the two tracks and how they fit together is in our Aintree course guide.
How the fences have changed since the 1840s
Nothing on the course in 1839 was built for the purpose. The race crossed farmland, much of it plough, and the obstacles were the hedges, banks and brooks that divided one field from the next, plus a stone wall in front of the stands. The riders jumped what was there.
Over the following half-century the natural obstacles were replaced by made fences on the same sites, the wall gave way to the Water Jump, and the plough was laid to grass. By the 1880s the course was all turf, railed, and laid out much as it is now. The positions of the fences have barely moved since. Their construction has changed repeatedly.
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| 1841 | Water Jump takes the place of the stone wall, on the Jockey Club's dating |
| 1928 | Ditch in front of the Canal Turn filled in after that year's pile-up |
| Early 1960s | Take-off sides sloped so the fences are no longer upright |
| 1984 | Seventh and twenty-third fence named Foinavon |
| 1990 | Becher's Brook remodelled after the 1989 race |
| 2012 | Fourth fence lowered, first fence landing levelled, Becher's drop reduced, toe boards raised |
| 2013 | Timber cores replaced by flexible plastic in twelve fences |
| 2024 | First fence moved 60 yards nearer the start and eleventh fence lowered |
The sloping of the take-off sides at the start of the 1960s was the largest single change to how the fences ride. Before it they were upright, like a wall of thorn and gorse, and a horse that misjudged its take-off met a vertical face. An apron of spruce angled out from the base gave horses a ground line and some room for error.
The changes of the past fifteen years have a common pattern. Heights have hardly been touched: two inches off the fourth, two off the eleventh. What has been altered is everything a horse hits or lands on. The cores are soft where they were rigid. The landings are level where they sloped. The boards at the base are taller. The run to the first is shorter.
Whether that leaves the same race is argued over every April. The evidence of the results is that the fences are jumped more safely than they were and that fewer horses fall; in 2024 none did. The evidence of the eye is that they are still unlike anything else in British racing, still green, still wide, still met at racing pace by a big field. Anyone who thinks they have become ordinary park fences in fancy dress should watch the Canal Turn with thirty runners arriving at once. The outliers the fences have produced, from the smallest number of finishers to the fastest time, are collected on our page of National records, and the rest of our racing guides for readers in England start from the hub page.