Part 4
The writer’s use of the word “Shire” will be remarked; we cannot doubt but that a breed of horses whose home was in these counties would have been known in other localities as “Shire Horses,” like the “Norfolk Trotter” and “Suffolk Punch,” and at a later date the “Clydesdale;” the only difference being that the Shire was
distributed over a larger breeding area, which therefore furnished him with a less strictly local name. Arthur Young, it will also be observed, describes the breed as the “Large Black Old English Horse,” a name which, as we have seen, had been in current use since at least the time of Oliver Cromwell. The Eastern counties breed was known and described as the Black Lincolnshire Horse. Black and grey, as Mr. Reynolds points out, were held to indicate purity of breeding.
We have now reached a period when painters of animal pictures were sometimes commissioned to execute portraits of fine examples of horses, cattle and sheep. The engraving which faces this page is from a picture by Mr. Woodward of a Norfolk Cart Horse called DODMAN (East Anglian for “Snail”), of whose pedigree unfortunately no particulars exist, but which was foaled in the year 1780. This horse was the property of an ancestor of Anthony Hamond, Esq., and the portrait is preserved at his family seat in the parish of Westacre near Brandon. The long hair-lock hanging from the knee arrests the eye; this appendage, like a moustache on the upper lip and a hair lock projecting from the back of the hock, is regarded as the distinguishing mark of a strain or variety of the Shire. DODMAN seems to have been used as a stallion in the district whence was obtained, nearly a century later, HONEST TOM (1105), whose portrait faces page 60.
Our next engraving is from a picture by George Morland, which was probably painted at about the same date as that of DODMAN. That artist, between 1790 and 1795, went into hiding in Leicestershire to escape from his creditors; he took up his abode in the neighbourhood of Mr. Bakewell’s famous Dishley Farm; and the horse portrayed resembles in no small degree pictures of some of Mr. Bakewell’s stud, which at that period had attained its highest repute. It is therefore exceedingly likely that this represents a typical Leicestershire Cart Horse of the time. It belongs to a type differing in some respects from DODMAN, being longer in the body, finer about the head and lacking the hair-lock in front of the knee, while the mane, tail, and feathering on the legs are less profuse. These two portraits afford opportunity of comparing two varieties of the Shire, the Fenland and the Leicestershire.
The _Sporting Magazine_ of 1796 contains an article headed “Operations on British
Horses,” in which the following passage occurs:--
“We have a large and strong breed in the more fertile and luxuriant parts of the island; and there is no country can bring a parallel to the strength and size of our horses destined for the draught, as there are instances of single horses that are able to draw the weight of three tons.”
The roads in England had been vastly improved since Holinshed described the drawing powers of a team of horses in the latter half of the sixteenth century; but we cannot doubt that the horse itself had also improved, more especially during the eighteenth century when the Great Horse was gradually becoming the servant of the farmer rather than that of the soldier. The Statutes to which reference has been made unquestionably did much to promote the building up of the Great Horse breed and establish it as national; the counties and districts enumerated in 32 of Henry VIII. quoted on p. 24 show very clearly how wide was the area over which the breed was distributed three and a half centuries ago; and it would be superfluous to lay stress upon the increase of the area over which the Shire horse has been bred since that remote day.
It would seem that the action which our forefathers sought to develop in the Great Horse was still characteristic, in some degree at least, of the Shire at the end of the last century; this engraving, published at the time, shows a horse named ELEPHANT, whose portrait was painted in 1792 by an artist whose name is unknown. An inscription on the frame tells us that this horse was “supposed to be one of the most boney horses ever seen;” at four years old he “is said to have stood 16’2” and to have girthed 8 feet, while he measured round the knee-joint 16½ inches. He was plainly a horse of great muscular development and big bone, while his attitude suggests the activity and spirit that distinguished the War Horse from which he was descended.
From one of Garrard’s pictures now hanging in the Council Room of the Shire Horse Society, we take our engraving of this gelding which was in use at Whitehead’s Brewery in 1792, and was therefore a contemporary of the horse painted by George Morland, and of ELEPHANT. This picture served as an illustration in Garrard’s series of engravings of British Farm Stock. It is the likeness of an excellent horse--“type perfect, flat bone, with good hocks, pasterns and feet.” Apparently this is a fen-bred horse; a chestnut with the white face and
markings which we have, of late years, learned to associate with the stock of the Rutlandshire Champions. High prices were paid for Shires in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Mr. Hambleton of Callon Moor sold to Mr. Summerland in 1778 a brown stallion for 350 guineas; and in 1791 a two-year-old stallion named Marston was sold by Mr. Handley for 500 guineas; these would be good prices for pedigree stock at the present day.
It is worth adding to the portraits of Shire Horses foaled during the last decades of the eighteenth century one more showing a pair whose colour betrays them as belonging to a variety closely allied to that last noticed. The picture facing page 58 shows two horses named PIRATE and OUTLAW, and was painted in 1810 by an artist named J. C. Zeitter; the owner of the work was Mr. Andrew McCullum, and it was engraved by J. Egan.
These particulars we obtain from an inscription on the frame of the work, which is our only source of information. Having an eye to the accessories in the background, we infer that Pirate and Outlaw were, like Garrard’s horse, the property of a brewer; both before and after this period views of well-known breweries were favourite subjects with some of our best animal painters, who found excellent reason for their preference in the magnificent teams of dray horses of which private firms were so proud. The ownership of, and work performed by, these horses, are however of no special importance; the interest of the picture, apart from the substance and strength of the animals, lies in the colour. This curious parti-colour is by no means uncommon in the Shires reared in the Fen country; in the middle of the present century Mr. Colvin, of Pishobury, Sawbridgeworth, Hertfordshire, had a breed of Shire piebalds on his Home Farm. Mr. Charles Marsters, of Saddlebow, King’s Lynn, Norfolk, possessed a celebrated stallion, “England’s Wonder,” foaled in 1871; this horse was the sire of good animals, but many of them horses of odd colours. To this day there is a tendency to breed animals with white legs, white markings and odd colours.
THE SHIRE HORSE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
It may be of interest to see how the east country Shire appeared in the eyes of a very competent judge of horseflesh about the time
of Waterloo. Thus the traveller George Borrow, in his sketch of Tombland Fair, Norwich, where from time immemorial a show of stallions has been held at Easter:--
“There was shouting and whooping; weighing and braying; there was galloping and trotting; fellows with high-lows and white stockings--and with many a string dangling from the knees of their tight-breeches--were running desperately; holding horses by the halter, and in some cases dragging them along. There were long-tailed steeds and dock-tailed steeds of every degree and breed. There were droves of wild ponies, and long rows of sober Cart Horses. There were donkeys and even mules; the last a rare thing to be seen in damp misty England; for the mule pines in mud and rain, and never thrives so well as when there is a hot sun above and a burning sand below. There were--oh, the gallant creatures! I hear their neigh upon the winds; there were--goodliest sight of all--certain enormous quadrupeds, only seen to perfection in our native isle; led about by dapper grooms; their manes ribbanded and their tails curiously clubbed and balled. Ha! ha! How distinctly do they say, Ha! ha!”
When Borrow wrote this he had seen specimens of pretty nearly all the draught horses in Europe: including all the grandfathers of all the Percherons and Normandy carriage-horses.
The old paintings and engravings, examples of which we have introduced as far as possible in chronological order, possess practical value to breeders as showing the stamp and character of the Shire Horse at various periods of the history of the breed. We have traced its progress down to a date when the Stud Books relieve us of the necessity of further pursuit, and can only hope that success has attended this endeavour to show that our modern Shire Horse is descended from the animal which has filled so important a part at all times in the history of our country. It is also certain that during this century the Shire Horse has played no mean part in building up size and massiveness in all the other Draught breeds in the Kingdom. That he has undergone great changes is certain; but the characteristics of the breed, size, strength, substance, courage and docility, have been perpetuated and developed by careful selection till we have now in our Shire horse the ideal beast of draught.
BLYTHWOOD CONQUEROR, whose portrait faces page 64, stands as an excellent representative of the modern Shire stallion. This horse is by Hitchin Conqueror (4458) out of Blythwood Bountiful (11607), and was bred at Wood House Farm, Stansted, by Sir James Blyth. He was foaled in 1893, and is a bay, with white blaze and white feet.
HOW TO PRESERVE ITS CHARACTER.
To maintain the standard of excellence which has been attained at the cost of so much care, it is essential that only the best types should be used for breeding: such horses as are truly framed, are free from imperfections, and above all are free from hereditary unsoundness. The numerous statutes mentioned in the foregoing pages assisted our ancestors in building up the breed which has long been established as permanent. The longer a type has been _fixed_ the greater the certainty that the law “like produces like” will be justified; and to secure the best results it is of the first importance that we should study the pedigrees of the animals from which we propose to breed.
The sight of the magnificent teams which may be seen in the streets of our great cities, and under particularly favourable circumstances on Whit Mondays at the Cart Horse Parade in Regent’s Park, proves what careful and _continued_ attention to the science of breeding can produce in the way of attaining desired results in size and form. For many years past there has been a regular and extensive demand for massive horses of great muscular strength; bad roads made such animals indispensable up to a hundred years ago; and the heavy loads which our level streets and highways permit render the same qualities not less necessary now. To drag heavily laden waggons and drays, to shunt railway carriages and trucks, we need horses of the Shire stamp and character at their highest development; for it must be borne in mind that a compact, truly framed draught horse will move a given weight with far greater despatch and less chance of injury to himself than one whose shoulders are defective, whose loins are weak, legs ill formed, pasterns too long and feet defective.
THE FOREIGN MARKET.
It is noteworthy as proof of our dependence on this class of horse that, even when commerce and agriculture have been passing through a period of depression, at times when customers at any price even for the best classes of other live stock have been difficult to find, heavy draught horses suitable for town work have always remained in brisk demand at remunerative prices. Within the last few decades, too, new and important markets have been opened in all parts of the world. The United States of America took many of our best Shire horses every year until the introduction of prohibitive import tariffs; these naturally administered a severe check to the trade; but there is good reason to believe that the present year (1898) has witnessed a revival. Our best European customers now are the Germans; and of more remote buyers, the breeders of the Argentine Republic. It must be stated, in connection with what has been said on a previous page concerning the importance of studying pedigrees, that foreign buyers, though ready to pay large sums for our best, will possess themselves of the best only. Their object is to perpetuate the Shire breed pure, and also to improve the bone, size and substance of native breeds; and with this purpose in view they are invariably most exacting on the points of pedigree and soundness. They know that good pedigree and soundness are essential, and require that their purchases shall not only be registered in the Stud Book, but shall be able to show the clearest record of descent; such record shows that the qualities of the individual horse are hereditary, and may be relied on as transmissible to its progeny.
Important testimony to the value of the Shire Horse will be found in a report issued some few years ago by the Canadian Government. It includes portion of a letter from Mr. R. S. Reynolds, M.R.C.V.S., Veterinary Inspector to the Corporation of Liverpool, and a well-known judge of and writer on Draught Horses. Mr. Reynolds, after writing fully on draught horses generally, concludes his remarks as follows:--“My judgment is entirely in favour of the Shire, as the one best calculated to procreate a breed--suited for the purposes of heavy draught--from smaller and lighter mares.” He assigns as his reason the fact that the size and bone of the average Shire are superior to those of any other description of horse; and further because there is presumptive evidence that the increased frame and bone of the other draught breeds are due to the infusion of Shire horse blood. Mr. Reynolds also strongly asserts his belief that, the original type of every other draught breed being of much lighter build than the existing race, there will be marked tendency in the progeny of such breeds to revert to the original form. Not only when these interbreed will this tendency appear, but when crossed with mares of other blood deficient in bone, degeneration will be still more rapid.
Many old paintings and mezzotint engravings exist to show us the type of Great or Shire Horse as it was bred at various epochs of our history, more or less remote. Some of these have been deposited at the offices of the Shire Horse Society; and these likenesses, often the work of the first painters and engravers of their day, suffice to show that in massiveness and general character the heavy horses of England were much like those of to-day. We have now many horses whose pedigrees are traced in the first volume of the Shire Horse Stud Book for at least a century and a half; back to a date which was within a lifetime of the last days of armoured knights carried by Great Horses. It is this long line of descent which guarantees the continued transmission of valuable qualities.
The paintings and engravings, as also the written accounts of the breeds of draught horses in the United Kingdom up to the middle of this century, depict them as of medium size, and it is only by the blending of the “Shire” with the blood of such stock, that they rival the latter in massiveness.
THE SHIRE HORSE SOCIETY.
It is impossible to close this slight review of the history of the breed without reference to the very important services which have been rendered by the Shire Horse Society. This Society originated in the work of a few men who desired to make an organised endeavour to improve and promote the breeding of the English cart horse by distributing sound and healthy sires throughout the country. Public attention was first drawn to the matter in the year 1877, when Mr. Frederic Street read his paper on “The Shire Horse” at the Farmers’ Club.
The Society was founded in 1878 as the “English Cart Horse Society,” it became in 1884 the “Shire Horse Society”: and under the latter name has continued to confer on tenant farmers the benefits which accrued from the date of its establishment. The work of the Society and the eagerness with which breeders have availed themselves of its labours may be seen from the nineteen volumes of its Stud Book. The first volume is a monument of painstaking research; it contains the pedigrees of upwards of 2,380 stallions, many of which were foaled in the last century. These invaluable records were supplied by members from almost every county in England; and their compilation was a task to which Mr. R. S. Reynolds devoted years. The second volume was published the year after the first, and the Stud Book has since been published annually. The nineteenth volume issued at the beginning of the present year shows the total number of animals registered to be 42,304, viz., 17,101 stallions and 25,203 mares.
The entries during the current year are, I am informed, not far behind the large total of 1897; this is the more gratifying in view of the fact that more stringent conditions of registration have been imposed. It is not desired to overload these pages with statistics; but the following few figures quoted from the Report of the Council in March last will serve to show the progress made in the last fourteen years.
1884 1898 Number of Members 903 2237 Entries in Stud Book for year 1423 3581 Value of Prizes given £524 £1200
The last eleven volumes of the Stud Book have contained in each year tabulated lists of prizes won; thus displaying fully a very important appendage to a pedigree. The illustrations, some from paintings, others from photographs of stallions and mares which have taken the Championship at the Society’s Annual Show, which are to be found in each volume, possess not only an instructive value for the breeders of the day, but as time goes on will form a series of the utmost interest and importance as the pictorial record of the progress of the breed. The essays on breeding and management which are to be found in these volumes, coming from experts who are not only masters of their respective subjects, but who possess the gift of lucidly conveying their knowledge, enhance the value of the Stud Books in no small degree.
The Show held each spring serves a double purpose in promoting the interests of the breed and keeping breeders in personal touch with one another to the advantage of all. It may be worth giving here, in condensed form, the number of entries received for the Shows of the last ten years since the first edition of this little book was published.
1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 Stallions 276 480 332 337 294 Mares 171 166 165 224 213 Geldings -- -- -- -- -- ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 447 646 497 561 507 ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 Stallions 268 241 263 319 300 Mares 207 226 223 217 210 Geldings -- 22 17 17 16 ---- ---- ---- ---- ---- 475 489 503 553 526 ---- ---- ---- ---- ----
Many causes operate to produce fluctuation in the numbers of entries; but the general average is well maintained, and the quality of exhibits, as the auctioneers’ returns prove, continues steadily to advance.
The Society has numbered among its Presidents His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, who takes a keen personal interest in the breed above all others associated with agriculture, and has owned a stud for many years; the Earl of Ellesmere; Earl Spencer, K.G.; the Hon. Edward Coke; the Earl of Powis; the Duke of Westminster, K.G.; Mr. William Wells of Holme Wood, Peterborough; Lord Egerton of Tatton; Mr. Anthony Hammond of Westacre, Norfolk; Lord Wantage; Mr. Chandos-Pole-Gell; Lord Hothfield; Mr. R. W. Sutton Nelthorpe; Lord Belper; Mr. A. C. Duncombe; Lord Tredegar; and Mr. A. B. Freeman Mitford.
For myself I may say in all sincerity that the year 1883, when I had the honour of holding office as President of the Society, and the year 1897 when again I was paid the compliment of being asked to fill the Presidential chair will always remain in memory as among the pleasantest in a tolerably active life.
* * * * *
Works by SIR WALTER GILBEY, Bart.,
Published by Vinton & Co., 9 New Bridge Street, London, E.C.
Modern Carriages
_Published April, 1904_
The passenger vehicles now in use, with notes on their origin. Illustrations. Octavo, cloth gilt, price 2s. net; post free, 2s. 3d.
Poultry-Keeping on Farms and Small Holdings
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Hunter Sires
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Horses for the Army--a suggestion
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Riding & Driving Horses, their Breeding & Rearing
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Small Horses in Warfare
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Arguments in favour of their use for light cavalry and mounted infantry. Illustrated. Octavo, cloth gilt, price 2s. net; post free, 2s. 3d.
Horses Past and Present
_Published 1900_