At Radnor Hunt, a scene from the past

The handsome Willistown Township countryside jockey George Hundt traversed Tuesday afternoon as he prepared for Saturday's 81st Radnor Hunt Races was an outdoor museum, one that better than anywhere else reflected the Philadelphia area's horsey, aristocratic past.

The six steeplechase events that make up Saturday's $180,000 race card will be run there, at the Radnor Hunt Club, which moved from Bryn Mawr in 1924 to these rolling grounds just west of the Goshen and Providence Roads intersection.

As the restored blacksmith shop on Goshen Road hinted at, steeplechasing, foxhunting, and thoroughbred breeding have deep roots in the gentleman farms of eastern Chester County. And thanks in large part to money raised by the Radnor Hunt's annual races, this verdant patch of horse history remains little changed from its Philadelphia Story heyday.

"Maybe 20-25 years ago everybody thought Radnor would be long gone by now," said Franny Abbott, a Radnor Hunt member and past president of the National Steeplechase Association. "Now it's probably one of the stronger hunts in the country."

It's located along a lengthy stretch of Goshen Road between Routes 252 and 352 that was once populated by the estates of familiar blue-blood names - DuPonts, Wideners, Strawbridges, even Rockefellers.

Eventually, encroaching development sent many of them - and their horse operations - to southern Chester County. But the remaining families, along with organizations like the Brandywine Conservancy and the Willistown Conservation Trust, have managed to preserve this attractive slice of the past.

On one corner is the farm where Roy Jackson, Barbaro's owner and a Rockefeller heir, grew up - property now owned by film director M. Night Shyamalan.

The hilly acreage across Goshen Road was the Happy Hill Farm estate of Widener family offspring, Ella Anne and Cortright Wetherill, who bred Raise a Native, considered one of the 20th century's greatest thoroughbred sires.

Veteran horsewoman Betty Moran, whose Brushwood Stables bred Belmont Stakes winner Crème Fraiche, still lives a few miles down Providence Road. And it was in fields on or adjacent to Radnor Hunt where many of the riding scenes in Alfred Hitchcock's 1964 movie Marnie were filmed.

"There were a lot of racing people in Philadelphia well into the '80s," Abbott said. "There aren't quite as many now."