NEWMARKET  , a

market town in the Newmarket parliamentary division of Cambridgeshire, England, 131 M . E. by N. of Cambridge on the Bury branch of the Great Eastern railway . Pop . (19o1) 1o,688 . A part of the town is in Suffolk, and the urban district is in the administrative county of West Suffolk . Newmarket has been celebrated for its horse-races from the time of James I., though at that time there was more of coursing and hawking than horse-racing . Charles I. instituted the first cup-race here . For the use of Charles II., during his visits to the races, a palace, no longer extant, was built on the site of the lodge of James I . There are numerous residences belonging to patrons of the turf, together with stables, and racing and training establishments . The racecourse, which lies south-west of the town, has a full extent of 4 m., but is divided into various lengths to suit the different races . The course intersects the so-called Devil's Ditch or Dyke (sometimes also known as St Edmund's Dyke), an earthwork consisting of a ditch and mound stretching almost straight for 5 M. from Reach to Wood Ditton . It is 12 ft. wide at the top, 18 ft. above the level of the country, and 30 ft. above the bottom of the ditch, with a slope of 5o ft. on the south-west side and 26 ft. on the north-east .

It formed part of the boundary between the kingdoms of East Anglia and

Mercia, but is doubtless of much earlier origin . Roman remains have been found in the neighbourhood .