The Great Horse; or, The War Horse: from the time of the Roman Invasion till its development into the Shire Horse.Gilbey, Walter, Sir
History
The Great Horse; or, The War Horse: from the time of the Roman Invasion till its development into the Shire Horse.
Gilbey, Walter, Sir
Horses; Horses -- Great Britain -- History; Shire horse
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:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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