Jacey Bedford's Journal

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.