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AS OTHERS SEE US - HINDERWELL SHOW
ANTHONY DENT Hinderwell "in the wapentake of Langbaurgh Easto" according to my trusty Directory of North Yorkshire, published in 1890 "includes the township of its own name and also the chapelry of Roxby." And there you have it. Roxby is a famous place in the annals of the Cleveland Bay horse, and of the Cleveland hounds, who were known as "T' Roxby dogs" and operated from there in the days before they were kennelled; then they were trencher-fed, as some Cumberland foxhounds still are. So long ago that the Shires had not yet won their primacy as fox-hunting country, and it was not yet non-U to call a hound a dog. Before my time or yours. The Show is a comparatively modern institution by these standards. It has only been running for 101 years. It is chiefly noted for its Cleveland Bay classes; not that it is the biggest show to list such classes, nor because the greatest number of Clevelands are entered there. But because it is held in the heart of the Cleveland breeding area. What Exford Stallion Parade is for Exmoor breeders, what Princetown is for Dartmoor breeders, so is Hinderwell to the Clevelander. From the rest of England, the small agricultural show has vanished or is vanishing. Its place is taken by the County Agricultural Show on the one hand and the local horse show on the other. But in the North Country the all-purpose mini-show hangs on tenaciously, reflecting faithfully all facets of rural life, with classes for all kinds of livestock and produce, from a half-dozen brown eggs and a plate of onions upwards. There are no entries this year for the Twelve Ears of Wheat, Ditto Barley or Ditto Oats, the summer has been so cold and wet that those who grow grain are still trying to make hay and will be lucky if they can lead their corn in October. The in-hand classes for horses are in three sections Hunting, Cleveland, and Agricultural. The implication is that a Cleveland Bay could be either Hunting or Agricultural according to what day of the week it was. Today Hunting includes ponies, and is very carefully not called Hunter. This section contains very much what you will see at the local horse show all over the country-mainly beloved hunter mares retired after long service, with a foal by the local premium Stallion at foot; likewise pony mares that have been in one family a long time, with a foal by an Arab or a Welsh Mountain sire. The Agricultural Section is something that you will not see in the South, except at the very biggest exhibitions. Down there, you would not be able to fill such a class from the draft-horse population of a mere half-dozen parishes. Here, there is only one "outsider " a brewer's team from the West Riding. Just to make it harder for the brewer, one of the classes stipulates that the horses have to be driven in ploughlines. Nevertheless, he wins this too, with two splendidly matched Shires. North Riding farmers are not noted for sentimentality; there must be some solid economic reason why so many of them continue to breed and work heavy draft horses. They cannot be hired out to the film-makers, the nearest studio is two hundred miles away, nor can they subsist the year round on the prize money from Hinderwell, Castleton and Commondale shows. One can only conclude that they are still earning their keep on the farm. In the Cleveland Bay section, though there are classes for all ages and sexes, stallions are by no means to the fore. This is inevitable, since there is still a shortage of stallions of this breed remaining in the country (not long ago the number fell dangerously near the Plimsoll mark) and those that remain have been hard at work for months; for them, Mars and Venus have been in conjunction for a good six months, and both have left their scars by now. The winner of the Male Special has had forty mares this season. The mares in the Brood Class vary between sixteen and seventeen and a half hands, and to the outside eye are very uniform in type. The view from the showground demonstrates how and why that type has been developed. This is the heartland of the Cleveland Bay-not the Vale of Guisborough, which nobody hereabouts ever calls or has called the Vale of Guisborough, a phrase invented by some equestrian journalist, a rootless cosmopolitan with the Vale of Mowbray at the back of his mind. It is and always has been this high windy shelf of grassland sloping down from the crest of the moorlands to the rocky cliffs about Whitby and Staithes. It is also good cornland, barring the chance of the odd cold summer like this one, but it is a very stiff holding clay, demanding a cleanlegged horse, whereas much feather might mean a nightmare of greasy heels. For centuries the Cleveland Bays went before the plough in teams of three, a method of harnessing unknown elsewhere in England, often working side by side with ox teams, which are also good on clay land, almost to within living memory. The bays also went before the wagon and the tumbril, along these steep and winding lanes which snake away from the showground as far as the eye can see. They drew the raw material and the product of the various mineral industries that have flourished and declined here, from the jet of prehistoric times to the iron ore which was last worked only five years ago; abandoned workings of them all, salt, alum, and the rest, are all within the horizon of this showground. Perhaps the era that is about to dawn on Cleveland, of mining potash for which prospectors are now drilling, will be the first of the Mining Ages of Cleveland never to have used horse transport, with or without the benefit of wheels. I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills and what do I see? From here, but the skyline of Roxby High Moor. Beyond that skyline, until the nineteenth century, there were no roads suitable for wheeled traffic for scores of miles, just as on Exmoor at the other end of England. Here the maternal ancestors of the Cleveland Bay plied their trade, under the name of Chapman (merchant) Horse, for centuries. Over the ridges and across the fords belly-deep in winter, they carried all the necessities of life between farm and mill and market and dockside. Anything between two and seven hundredweight on a packsaddle, according to the length of the haul. And the paternal ancestors? Something exotic, certainly. The exotic is not absent from the ringside today. A few New Zealand voices, because nearby Whitby is just now celebrating the twofold centenary of James Cook's famous voyage of discovery with antipodean junketings. However, the entry in the catalogue describing an exhibitor as "J. Welford (America)" is misleading. It means America House, a famous stud visible from here, and so-called I suppose because so much of its stock was exported to America. The stock answer to the question, what were the hot-blooded forefathers of the Cleveland Bay, the sires that were put to Chapman mares at a period slightly before the foundation sires begat the Thoroughbred race horse (we are very proud of this seniority, which gives the Clevelander about fifty years priority to Newmarket and all that) is Barb stallions. I would not dispute this, in part, especially since Cleveland has special ties with Barbary. Sir Hugh Cholmondely, an old cavalier who had made a famous defence of Scarborough Castle in the Civil War, in later life was in charge of harbour works at Tangier for the brief time that we held that most unprofitable colony, and in a good position to buy and send home hand-picked Barb stallions in Charles II's time. But since the claim has been steadily made, though naming no names, that the mixture of hot blood goes back further in time than this, let us look at the horses in Section Two here today in search of any feature that reminds us of horses in warmer lands than this, at the same time buttoning our mackintoshes against another squall from the North Sea. Nothing, so be sure, of the Arab. Indeed, so remote is this possibility that it is not even mentioned in the ancient Clevelanders exclusive formula "Not a Trace of Black or Blood." But yet there is something, not always in combination, but occuring as two of its elements in every horse in these classes today-sometimes all three in one. A very broad breast; a tendency to Roman nose, called by old Blundeville more tactfully "the face curving downwards like a hawk's, and a rather low-set tail, combined with a sloping and powerful croup. These are among the hallmarks of the Andalusian horse as it is seen, for instance, in many paintings by Velasquez and Van Dyck. The Andalusian was the charger for international Top Brass from the days of William the Conqueror to those of Cromwell. Such chargers were beyond the pocket of regimental knights in the Middle Ages, beyond the pocket of regimental officers in Stuart times, but they were ridden by Civil War generals like Prince Rupert, by the Earl of Essex, by Tom Fairfax, who came from these parts to succeed Essex as the Parliament Army's Commander-in-Chief. After the Civil War, during which all who had the money would have imported as many Andalusian stallions as conditions permitted (and this was the last age in which the stallion was regarded as the only fit horse for a charger), the horses of all leading royalists were sequestered and with the coming of peace even some of those belonging to Roundhead generals would have become redundant, so that for the first time for centuries these magnificent stallions would have been going relatively cheap, cheap enough to be used on Chapman mares. And this is precisely the date at which, it is claimed, the Cleveland type crystalised. For the title Father of Cleveland Bays, then, my money today is on El Bravo Caballo Andaluz. (August, 1968). 1969
Cleveland Bay Magazine - No.2 |