Margaret Harvey and Wharfedale Riding School

[jacey]

The Harvey Family - Margaret on the left.

Back in 2011 I posted some recollections of my college riding club days and riding at the stables in Menston, Near Otley, Yorks, run by Margaret Harvey. Margaret was a character. Even when we knew her in the 1970s she seemed to be a little out of time - a relic of those 1950s pony books that I grew up reading, a mixture of tweedy pony club and jolly hockey sticks with an exceedingly gung-ho attitude to almost everything.

I lost touch with Margaret. She seemed so much older than us at the time we knew her (everyone over thirty was ancient, of course) so back in 2011 I figured she was probably dead. It turns out I was wrong then, though sadly she died just before Christmas in late 2015, so this is a retrospective. Margaret and I communicated by email briefly, but she had a fall and then a stroke and one thing led to another...

I am a member of the Wharfedale Riding School facebook group. Ex-pupils, helpers and employees have been posting photographs of Margaret's remarkable life with horses, some of the slightly fuzzy ones are scanned from newspaper articles.

Here are some of them.


1950s. A Very Big Adventure. Margaret leads a trek from Menston to Malton. The gypsy vardo on the right was always in stable yeard when I used to ride there.



1858. Margaret with Wharfedale Gay Metal, winners at the Bramham Hunter Trials.


1960 Margaret Metal and some of his trophies



Margaret riding Metal (the grey) and Heather Willett riding Star, Margaret's other great jumping pony. Both ponies lived to a ripe old age.


Margaret in 1973 winning the Winter Riders in Doncaster on Kestrel, her own home-bred appaloosa stallion who sired a great many of the foals that she bred. She beat many of the famous names of the day.


As late as 2013. Margaret with Ravennah, the great great granddaughter of one of her favourite mares, Honey. By this time the riding school was long gone, but not all the horses.


Margaret Harvey RIP.

Comments

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

The vardo makes me smile- one of my great grandads was born in one! :o)

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

It was amazingly compact and practical inside. I loved it.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Like the back cabin of a canal longboat!

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

That's a great pedigree for the last photo. I'm glad to have taken on one of Shah's foals, but I doubt I'll be able to track hiss line through that many generations in the future.

Looks like Margaret had an impressive life too.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

Mick Knowles has Margarets notes which include breeding notes. Some of them are a bit cryptic, but the details are still available. You'll find Mick hanging out on the facebook group. https://www.facebook.com/groups/1467653556836948/

[stevie-carroll.livejournal.com]

This is a very rare occasion when I'm sorry not to be on Facebook. Breeding and genetics fascinate me.

My Taz shares a bunch of character traits with his half-siblings, even though he's the only bay in a line of bright chestnuts. And at least one of them has been used as a stallion, so there'll be more of the daft creatures out there somewhere.

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

If you email me at jacey(at)jaceybedford.co.uk I can give you Mick's email address.

[kelly andpt aird (from livejournal.com)]

I have a deep love for margerat. I rode for the first time on myron at age 4 then pandora...cherokey snowey brambling enchanter belle magic and even tomohawk. I knew honey breifley. I owe this lady a lot and have many fond memories x

[birdsedge.livejournal.com]

You might like to join the facebook group that Mick Knowles started. There are a lot of old photographs with the ponies you mention, https://www.facebook.com/groups/1467653556836948/