Marshall in his Rural Economy of Norfolk, published 1795, describes the road races in which “the lead was the goal contended for:” in his time this dangerous amusement, as he justly considered it, had been “a good deal laid aside though not entirely left off.” The gist of Marshall’s account has been given in a former little work.[B]
From Heavy Horses (No. 3 of Messrs. Vinton’s Live Stock Handbooks Series), we take the following interesting passage which shows the value set upon good Shires, by their owners in the middle of the eighteenth century:
“Only within the last year or so there went over to the great majority ... an old stud groom, whose grandfather in his day was at the head of a famous stud owned by people of the name of Gallemore, who for generations had a celebrated Shire stud within two miles of Calwich Abbey. At the time when Prince Charlie marched on Derby in the famous ’45 this old retainer was forced to take refuge from the invaders and place the stallions of this stud in a place of safety. This he successfully did.”
The fear lest these animals should be appropriated by the invader reminds us of the similar state of affairs three hundred years previously, when the Wars of the Roses created a demand for horses which private owners took extreme measures to avoid satisfying at their own expense (pages 19-20).
This excerpt also furnishes us with a link between past and present; for volume i. of the Shire Horse Stud Book contains mention of several of the original Derbyshire stallions named Gallemore, which were no doubt called after their owners. The stud referred to was stabled at Croxden Abbey—“and from its courtyard the horses went forth into hiding. Though it cannot be stated as an absolute fact, all the evidence points to the famous Packington Blind Horse having been begotten at this same place” (Ibid., p. 16).
The direct descendants of the Packington Blind Horse (believed to have been in his full vigour from 1755 to 1770) are traced down to the year 1832.
It is certain that this breed, for which War Horse, Great Horse, Old English Black Horse or Shire Horse are terms used at different periods has been distributed for centuries through the district between the Humber and the Cam, occupying the rich fen lands of Lincolnshire and Cambridgeshire, and extending westward through the counties of Huntingdon, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, Derby, Norwich and Stafford, on to the Severn. It has also been extensively bred in the low-lying pasture lands of England, in the counties both north and south of those named, everywhere retaining its typical character subject to slight variations produced by differences of climate, soil and food.
When Arthur Young, in the latter part of the last century, was describing his tours through the counties of England and Scotland, he mentions only two varieties of Cart Horse as deserving attention, namely, the Large Black Old English Horse, “the produce principally of the Shire counties in the heart of England and the Sorrel-coloured Suffolk Punch for which the sandy tract of country near Woodbridge is famous.”
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
