Fell pony  breed information

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"Always there - exploring the history of the Fell pony"
written by Sue Millard (published in the Native Pony magazine & on the Manes and Tails web site)

The likelihood of romantic stories containing anything more than a seed of truth is small, and British breed Societies wisely make little of them. The Fell pony’s very own little bit of popular myth is this: its frequently black colour, and long mane, tail and feather, are said to indicate Friesian blood, passed on through nearly 2,000 years from Roman cavalry stock in the 2^nd century AD.

Well, we can speculate all we like, but how much influence is there likely to be left from 2,000 years ago? In all probability, the Fells’ myth is no more significant than the many “Spanish Armada” stories. In those distant times there were French, German, Sarmatian, Hungarian and many other tribal groups serving as cavalrymen in the North; not just lowland Dutch. Troops came and went, taking with them (or stealing) a variety of horses, but no doubt breeding went on as it does today, for the job in hand with whatever stock was available. Some tribes gelded their horses for war service, which would put cross breeding out of the picture. We know a little about the  horses of the Germanic tribes of that time which Tacitus says were “remarkable neither for beauty nor swiftness”; but we really don’t know how much they contributed to the ancient background of Fell ponies.

Bones found all over Britain by archaeologists show that equines stood about 11 to 12 hands in size, both before and after the Roman occupation[i]. We can’t begin to guess at the British ponies’ colour, unless we make the assumption that they wore the darker shades of the primitive pony coat, brown or dun (buckskin), like the wild Tarpan and Przwalski horses; perhaps some of them were black, or even grey, but we don’t have any really early records that give clues. Sculptures don’t label the animals and they are just shown in the colours of stone or bronze.

There is very scant evidence of what any particular type of British ponies might have looked like in the 12 centuries between Roman rule and the era of Elizabeth I. Some harness fittings and small pony-size 3.5” to 4” bits survive[ii]. There are some sculptures, and those thin scatterings of the bone record which indicate ponies increasing in average size, very gradually indeed, up to about 13.2 hands in Saxon to Medieval times. The Bayeux Tapestry shows a little pack pony, diplomatically smaller than the fighting cavalry ponies; and paintings show horses in the service of monarchs and the aristocracy. A few manuscripts, both ecclesiastical and secular, show horses in marginal drawings. But who was going to make any fuss over the workaday rustic pony, especially in the wild and inhospitable North? He must have been around in the background, like a ten year old Ford car: reliable but disregarded, unremarkable, a given – and so, undescribed. Who would bother to write about the everyday runabout when there were Ferraris or Rolls Royces to admire? He was just “always there”.

Eventually, as printed material becomes more available,  we do find clues. Evidence comes as it does today, from such apparent trivia as “lost and found” advertisements. It appears that small equines were not called “ponies” anywhere in Britain until relatively recently. However the term “Galloway” comes into use in Shakespeare’s time. Galloway was a former horse producing region of Southern Scotland, close to Cumberland. Advertisements in the  Cumberland Chronicle or Whitehaven Intelligencer [iii] in 1777 seek the return of stolen “horses” which the owners term either “Scotch” or “Galloways”. They give identifying details, and surprisingly these dark brown or bay “horses” are often only 11-2 to 13 hands high. Scottish Galloways were said to be fast, tireless, very sound, and able to move quickly over rough country[iv]. Cumbrian racing Galloways are traceable in the foundation stock of the Thoroughbred[v] but as they are sired by Barb horses, the term must also be a generic one of size and use, rather than a reproducible breed. What is clear is that these little saddle horses were valued; when they went missing, owners offered rewards for their return. 

In Cumberland and Westmorland, just as in other parts of Britain, for centuries ponies were the main method of transporting goods: wool – one of Britain’s major exports for centuries; cloth; lead and other ores; graphite from Borrowdale; pottery; foodstuffs of all kinds, wines and spirits and spices; fuel, and slate for roofs. Ponies walked long distances, from the north of England to London, from the west coast ports to the smallest inland farms, from the Pennine lead mines to the east coast ports. Even after the arrival of metalled roads, and the fast coaches and railway trains of the 19^th century which displaced most of the pack traffic, there was still some need for pack ponies on the narrow, steep and stony tracks of the Lake District. From the Lakes and from Southern Scotland, they would be the Galloways and the Fells, just as from Northumberland it would be the Dales. They were just “always there”. They were probably all the same thing in essence; smallish, tough, and useful. In the late 19^th Century the ponies of Cumberland and Westmorland were certainly  referred to as Fell-Galloways, and old farmers today may still be heard, very occasionally, using the term[vi] “Galloway” about Fell ponies. In Australia it still means a light riding horse.

Norfolk and Wales are far from Cumberland, but there is a little drop of both Welsh and Norfolk cob blood recorded in the Fell Stud Book in the early 20^th century, where pedigrees show that such stallions had been used two generations back. [vii]. Here we must go back and look at some alternatives to our “Roman myth” about the Friesian. In the 17^th century[viii] Dutch drainage experts came into Norfolk to drain the Fen country, bringing with them trotting horses that contributed to the Old English Black, later the Shire; and to the Norfolk cob or roadster . If the Friesian is to be claimed as having had any influence on the Fell, the Norfolk cob is a much more likely source than the heavy work-horse of 2,000 years ago[ix]. But the recorded evidence from the Fell Stud Book is small; one Norfolk cob stallion cannot have influenced the breed all that much. The Stud Book makes it clear that a far more important influence (on both breeds) was the closeness between the Dales and the Fells.

When did Fells start being “ponies” and not “horses”? Dr Johnson’s dictionary of 1755 contains the word but he admits he does not know where it came from. Spelt “poney” it appears in advertisements in the Westmorland Gazette in 1838 and is sometimes linked to the terms “Scotch” or “Galloway”. But it isn’t until 1894 that any reference appears to “Fell” ponies specifically. Before 1894, the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald tells only of agricultural shows where the Ponies were “not over 13½ hands”; “Cobs over 13½ hands and under 14½ hands;” and “Hackneys over 14½ hands.” Hesket-New-Market and Shap were the first two shows that offered classes for “Fell” ponies in 1894 and 1895 respectively. So it is not till 1894 that we have our first glimpse of recorded, dated,  “Fell history”.

The Polo and Riding Pony Society opened a stud book in 1893 to register native pony types suitable for breeding light horses for sport and recreation. It classed the ponies by the areas in which they were located, and stipulated that the ponies must be at least three-quarters “native” bred. This is when areas such as the New Forest, Highlands, Dales, and Fells began to be identified as pony producers, and the idea of a local, registered “breed” emerged in place of a local “type”. It’s also the origin of the modern height division, at 14-2 hands, between ponies and horses. In 1914 the Polo and Riding Pony Society became the National Pony Society (NPS). Their registrations of Fell ponies from 1898 onward indicate that brown and bay were the commonest colours, followed by black and grey with a few broken-coloured piebalds or skewbalds, roans, duns, creams or chestnuts. The permitted coat colours eventually settled to brown, bay, black and grey. Chestnut and broken-coloured ponies were debarred in 1940.  Other alternative colours, such as red or blue (“grey”) roan, were last registered in 1952 and 1966 respectively and those are represented in the background of some of the grey bloodlines.

Fell ponies were registered to the NPS through a Fell Pony Committee based in Penrith. In 1916 this Committee passed a resolution to become a Society in its own right, which became reality by the time it made its annual report in 1918. Since then the Fell Pony Society (FPS) has been the governing body for Fell ponies. The FPS’s aim was “to foster and keep pure the old breed of pony that has roamed the northern hills for years and to circulate knowledge and general information about the pony breed.” What the threat was to its purity, is not specified, but we shall see some of this later.

The formation of the Dales Pony Society at the end of 1916[x] indicated a strong feeling that, despite the frequent interchange of stallions, there were two types of pony in the Pennine area: the smaller, western, Fell, and the larger, eastern, Dale. The 1920s saw a general resurgence of interest in native breeds, such as the foundation of the Exmoor Pony Society in 1921 and the Highland Pony Society in 1923. In 1922, the FPS re-formed itself on more liberal lines to attract more members to support the Fell breed.

For thirty years the ponies of the Pennines were considered so similar that they could be cross-registered within the Dales and Fell stud books. However, around 1924 the FPS ruled that mares must measure under 13-2 hands, and in 1948 that the progeny of Dales or other stallions could not be registered as Fells without inspection, at 2 years old, for Fell type. These  were big steps towards separating the two types of ponies.

In 1940 an Inspection scheme was set up; on application, two FPS officers would visit an owner to check that a mare was of Fell type, and then she could be registered. Her fillies could be bred, but her colts had to be gelded; after 4 generations, her progeny were fully pedigreed. The Inspection scheme closed in 1970 and the Fell Pony Stud Book is now limited to registered stock. Fells were registered through the National Pony Society from 1914 to 1980, when the FPS took over responsibility for its own registrations.

In 1945 the FPS set up a breeding Enclosure scheme at Berrier, west of Penrith, whereby mares could be taken to a large “allotment” of land where a Fell stallion – voted for by the membership – would run all summer. This proved so successful that another Enclosure was organised in the southern part of the Lakes, though it moved to several different locations over time. The scheme was discontinued in 1976 owing to the difficulty of finding suitable secure land for the Enclosures, and to the stud owners preferring to keep an entire horse at home rather than travel their mares to somewhere else[xi].

A regulation passed in 1952 lowered the Fell stallion height limit to 14 hands with half an inch allowed for shoes; the height limit for mares was later raised to the same measurement and this is still the rule today.

There was an increasing threat to the pure Fell breed in the years 1919 to 1939, when Fell mares were being crossbred to the Clydesdale horse to produce a bigger, all purpose farm animal. Such cross-breeding had caused the extinction of the Scottish Galloway, which was absorbed into the Clydesdale breed in the early 19^th Century. Some Fells were used for shepherding, and light carting such as taking hay and feed to outlying animals. Some ponies at the smaller end of the height range still went to work in coal mines in County Durham; larger ones were bought to work in the milk floats which took dairy produce from the colliery farms that overlay the pits, to customers in the local towns and villages. Some were bought by the Army as pack horses: hence the insistence on breeding ponies with silky feather. Unlike the pits, the Army did not clip off the feather; so it wanted silky feather which did not attract dirt and wet so much as coarse feather. Silky feather made it easier to clean and maintain the ponies’ lower legs and feet in a healthy condition[xii]. But when the War Office withrew its premium for breeding ponies, numbers of available Fell stallions dwindled, until in 1932 only three paraded at the Stallion Show. It is worth mentioning that tractor power was just coming into farming at that time, and the demand for a big horse was slackening nationwide, so that the market for even the cross-bred Fell was reduced. Fells were still “always there”, but like all working horses of the time they were very much less wanted; two-year-olds could be bought for £3 each in 1936[xiii]. At a farm sale of 1932, as a comparison, a Cob mare had sold for £8 and a “bay mare” – breed not specified —for £30.

So how did the Fell survive as the pure “old breed” which the FPS still aims to foster? Financial support came to the FPS from several sources: from King George V; curiously, also, from another War Office contribution; and from Mrs Heelis (Beatrix Potter). The work of the FPS was important, but it would have come to nothing without the families such as the Charltons, Harrisons, Nobles, Waleses and Dargues who had land available at home or as stints on the hill and were passionate enough about Fells to want to keep them for their own qualities. They took pleasure in them as ponies rather than just valuing their working contribution to the farm. Some farmers used them for shepherding both around home and on the fell, but they were not really big enough to do serious farm work, like ploughing or cutting cereals or grass. During a big outbreak of grass sickness among the Clydesdales in the early 1940s, farmers doubled up with a pair of ponies to a single horse-size machine, but such work had to be cleverly done so as not to sicken the ponies with the sheer hard labour[xiv].

Strong, sound ponies were still wanted for trap work in the towns, and that market enjoyed a resurgence all over Britain when motor cars were subject to petrol rationing during the Second World War; but another lean patch followed the relaxation of those restrictions after the peace in 1945.

By 1950 however, the upsurge of interest in riding as a leisure activity for all brought British native ponies back into popularity, and the Fell among them.

As a strong, sensible mount that was a good doer and could be ridden by almost any member of the family, the Fell was an economical choice for pleasure riding in both private and commercial ownership.  There can be no doubt that the interest of the Royal family was a great help to the breed. Through ownership and use by HM Queen Elizabeth II and later by Prince Philip, the Fell’s place in the public eye was assured.

Today Fells are used successfully for many leisure and commercial activities; private hacking, activity holidays such as trekking or trail riding; long distance riding; showing and working breed classes; dressage; low level cross country events (a Fell does not have the jumping scope of the Thoroughbred though in proportion to his size he can probably jump higher!); long distance driving, as well as driving competitively across country, or for pleasure or show. They are used for riding and driving in activity centres for the disabled and, as previous editions of NP have shown, some owners use Fells for light forestry work and agricultural duties such as shepherding, and carting hay and feed to outlying animals. And, of course, there are still semi-feral herds providing a core example of hardy, tough, sensible ponies who can look after themselves.

 The key attribute of the Fell, which has assured its survival, is its ability to be useful in many different situations. To be just “always there”.

Home
Conservation in the 21st Century
"Fell History" by Sue Millard
Where do We Go From Here? - S. Millard
What is a Fell pony?
Not a Friesian
Miracles of Survival
Conservancy Press Release
FPS Liaison Resignation
Horse Sense - pony with a purpose
Fell pony; ALBC Conservation Priority List
Fell pony Temperament and Maturity
Beatrix Potter - Fairy Caravan
NA Fell pony History & Liaison Intro
Equine Bovine Mag
Fell Convention UK - Equine Journal
SE Equine Monthly
Fell Pony Journal
The Reach
Horsemens Yankee Pedlar
Rare Breeds Journal
Merlin at Kentucky Horse Park
ALBC
Rural Heritage