A Forty Horse Team

-
Filled my car up recently; a deeply painful experience.  I was cheered to learn on watching one of those life-in-the-police programmes last week that my car is so old (M reg) that the mere sight of it automatically makes the police get their judgey pants on and assume that if you are running an old banger you are unlikely to a. insure it or b. mot it so they put you through the computer as soon as they spot you.  Fail to see why I should get a new car when this one runs perfectly well despite its vast age (am hoping now that hubris does not hit me) though car does drink petrol at quite a rate.  Not entirely certain that running a horse and trap would be any cheaper, particularly not the 40 strong team below - so vast not all of it could fit in the photograph.

Barnum's Circus would have one man driving 40 horses with the band wagon leading the circus procession round the town.  Goodness knows how the driver managed the reins when negotiating corners.  W Theobald, of Cheltenham, who sent in the photograph, said "as the show visited fresh towns once or twice weekly, there would be no chance of a quiet rehearsal."




Comments

Anonymous said…
They have teams of heavy horses this size doing competitions in the USA today, I kid you not. Hope to go see them in action and not just on YouTube. Hell of a way to plough a field.
20 January 2011 at 12:11
Jane Badger said…
Good grief. Have done a bit more research on the side effects of the team from Barnums, about which more tomorrow but must scurry off now and investigate this phenomenon. I wonder if it's always been more of a thing in the US? The driver here was from the States.
20 January 2011 at 15:21
Christina Wilsdon said…
I've seen hitches of 8 to 10 horses at demonstrations and competitions at state fairs here, but nothing like this one--wow! Granted, you'd clearly need a field or city street to strut this kind of horsepower, and not just an indoor arena--still, even controlling one of these "smaller" hitches is an amazing thing to see.
20 January 2011 at 16:01
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rollkur and the blue tongue

-
I've been meaning to write about this all week, but reading the exclusive in Horse and Hound about the controversy tipped me over the edge. For my non-horsy readers, rollkur is a training/warming up technique used by some dressage riders. It basically involves riding the horse with its jaw pulled in virtually to its chest, in order to increase suppleness. Patrik Kittel , a Swedish competitor in Odense was videoed riding his horse in this way. If you watch the video , you'll see the horse's tongue hanging out - blue. It takes a while before the rider notices this. When he does, he stops, puts the horse's tongue back in, and carries on. There are two things which bother me about this. Firstly, I am fully aware large sections of the dressage world, and some of its brighest stars, consider rollkur perfectly ok, but the FEI guidelines state this practice should only be for short periods, allowing the horse to rest. Patrick Kittel apparently rode the horse for two hou
Read more

Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes

-
Image
My friend Louise sent me this picture today. It's from a children's book with the rather wince-making title For The Wee Ones. I thought, when I read that (because I read the message before I looked at the picture) that the picture was going to be a typical winsome production from the school of artists who think (or who are paid to think) that the child is a thing sent from God and a blissful thing. They had obviously never met a child, and certainly not mine. I should have known Louise better. The artist responsible for Archibald, don't eat the bedclothes slipped this one past the editors. Just look at the poor, broken Mother Rabbit. She knows she has not the faintest chance of being listened to, and poor thing, she is stooped in the way of a mother to whom this is just the lastest in a long line of horror; with nothing good to come. And Archibald is obviously the spawn of the Devil. Just look at those eyes. He'll have the bed after he's finished the bedclothes
Read more

Dick Sparrow - 40 Horse Hitch, and Neil Dimmock's 46 Percherons

-
Image
Here's a clip of Dick Sparrow driving 40 horses. It's an amazing sight, particularly when the shot changes to show the team from the rear and you get the great incongruity of modern American corporate architecture as a background to the wagon and horses. I love the anticipation in the video: the sense of something amazing being just round the corner is palpable. Thanks to Christina Wilsdon for telling me about this world record 46 Percheron hitch (alas just stills) but you get the idea.
Read more