Laundry Cottage Stud is a family business owned by Colin and Melba Bryce with help from their broadcaster daughter Gina, and her brother and sister Calum and Ailsa.
Gina is known in the industry as a presenter on Sky Sports Racing and BBC 5 Live, as well as undertaking private work including being the voice of the premier Tattersalls bloodstock sales. In 2025, she became the first female to call the Grand National when she joined John Hunt’s BBC 5 Live commentary team for the race. Gina’s husband, Alex Elliott is a leading Bloodstock Agent and acts as Bloodstock Advisor to Laundry Cottage Stud Farm and helps across all aspects of our work.
We are a member of the Newmarket Stud Farmers Association and also of the Thoroughbred Breeders Association, an organization that does much to promote the breeding of quality bloodstock in the UK.
History
Our small farm near the villages of Codicote and Knebworth in North Hertfordshire has been gradually built up since we began the thoroughbred breeding business in 2003.
The land was previously arable farmed although prior to that, a stud farm, was located on the same acres as part of the larger Node Estate. In the 1920’s Carl Holmes, the American founder of ‘The Yellow Cab Company’, developed the property as a model farm before it was purchased by Captain R. Brassey in 1938. It was Brassey who fenced the land and built the original boxes having moved his bloodstock from Ireland.
Among the horses he bred were the well-known at the time-Panche Calyan, Valoroso and Trent Bridge. The farm was noted for equipping offspring reared here with good bone- a point made by Land Agents, Bernard Thorpe & Partners when last selling the wider Node Estate in 1972.
The estate had passed from Capt. Brassey to Mrs Duncan McKinnon, and she decided to sell when moving her bloodstock to her main estate in Oxfordshire. Interestingly, part of the property sold in 1972 belonged to Mrs McKinnon’s daughter, the Hon. Mrs J, Cecil whose family name is well known and greatly respected in the horse racing world and beyond.
Today
We currently have 15 Thoroughbred mares (plus their followers) on the farm, 6 of which are wholly owned by Laundry Cottage Stud Farm, 4 which we own in partnership and 5 who board with us and are owned by our clients.
We believe in handling all the stock- mares, yearlings, foals and nanny’s- every day but we also believe in running the stock outside in all but the most inclement weather as this is the best way to prepare their anatomy and physiology for a healthy life. We view that this, combined with our excellent chalky undersoil and our regime of feeding and general pastoral care, delivers superior stock.
The farm has been privileged to have bred two breed shaping racehorses- Wootton Bassett and Via Sistina- both of whom are household names within the horse racing and breeding worlds.
For a small farm to have been fortunate enough to breed one of the best stallions in the world and one of the world’s best racehorses is quite astonishing. The pastoral care, attention to detail of all the farm staff, the quality of the land and the careful consideration of optimum matings have helped us ‘make our own luck’ in these breeding successes.