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
[Illustration: SHIRE HORSE, ELEPHANT (about 1792).]
[Illustration: PORTRAIT OF A SHIRE GELDING IN USE AT MESSRS. WHITBREAD’S
BREWERY IN 1792; after the Picture by Geo. Garrard, A.R.A.]
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
[Illustration: PIRATE AND OUTLAW (1810).]
[Illustration: PLOUGH TEAMS OF SHIRE HORSES. Bred by B. B. Colvin, Esq.,
of Pishiobury Park, Harlow, Essex, about 1844-1855.
(Drawn by P. Palfrey, from a Photograph.)]
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.
[Illustration: HONEST TOM 1105.
17½ Hands. Foaled 1865. By Thumper 2123, out of Beauty. Bred by Mr. W.
Welcher, Watton, Norfolk.]
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.
[Illustration: BLYTHWOOD CONQUEROR.]
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.
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Animal Painters of England
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FOOTNOTES:
[A] The falconer’s term for the male Lanner--a small hawk.
[B] _Harness Horses._ By Sir Walter Gilbey, Bart. Published by Vinton &
Co., London.