What are your thoughts on the differences between how the British Hackneys are bred and with what’s happening in other nations such as Holland?

It goes right back to William Burdett-Coutts, who was an MP and philanthropist, but also a tremendous horse fancier who had huge studs in London producing carriage horses.  He sent a bill through Parliament to try and get them to actually acknowledge the British driving breeds at the time but there wasn’t the interest.  Horses back then were largely bred and kept by the farmers, and the politicians chose not to go down that road at all.

So, since then it’s been left to individual breed societies and the breeders themselves to manage the standards. In the early days when I was involved with the Hackney Horse Society, there were some stallion inspections so if you wanted to exhibit at the annual breed show, the animal had to be inspected before you could show it.  And that was everything from the youngstock colts and fillies upwards, and permission to exhibit was granted.

There was a small panel of judges who would go around and inspect potential breeding stallions to enable them to become licensed.  I wasn’t involved on the administrative side at the point when this process ceased to happen.   It could be difficult and sometimes the breeders & owners were reluctant to accept the opinions of the inspectors.

In Holland, they have a different approach which is very thorough and much more robust.  When we took our homebred stallion Halloughton Hallmark over to Utrecht for a full stallion inspection it was a fascinating process. Ultimately, he came back home to England, but it was a really interesting process to witness, and I’ve never seen anything like it before.  The places where the stallions stand are massive and often have a lot of youngstock too.  It’s much more systematic and everyone accepts the decisions.

You have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Hackney breed and bloodlines.

If you are involved with a closed breed, which technically the Hackney is, you’ve got a much better chance of knowing all the ins and outs of what’s involved and who is doing what.  That said, breeding is as much about luck as anything!

When I was chair of the Hackney Horse Society, I tried to raise awareness about the genetic diversity issue in the breed.  We aligned with the Rare Breeds Survival Trust and tried to preserve DNA samples.

As driving people, we are so proud of our Hackney heritage. If you consider the huge influence of Frank & Cynthia Haydon, they bred a certain type of lighter harness horse with certain attributes for the show ring, but they also bred for the American coaching market, so had some bigger mares.  They also had had several studs under their governance.

 How did you get going with your own Halloughton stud here in Staffordshire?

The first mare I got was Hurstwood Credibility, then I got Hurstwood Tasia (Hurstwood was the Haydon’s prefix) from Scotland and she was about 16.2 hh.  She had belonged to a Mr Buchanan but he was in the oil industry and went to work offshore so couldn’t keep her anymore. It was Credibility who produced Halloughton Heritage, sired by our foundation stallion Marston Monarch, who was also quite big at15.3 hh and who had Hurstwood breeding going back through his bloodlines – Jake was his stable name. Jake and Credibility produced Halloughton Heritiage (Ellie) along with Halloughton Hallmark, Halloughton Hero and Halloughton Hallucination, amongst others.

When I started breeding Hackneys, it certainly wasn’t for coaching – I just liked the bigger horse anyway.

How did you go about putting together your coaching team, which included the appropriately named Brookfield Legend?

It happened with the help of Paul & Suzanne Bennet who worked for us for about four years.  The team were not homebred at the start but Legend, Watty, Dino and Cal were the main players to begin with.  Watty and Legend were fabulous leaders, brave as lions, and strong characters.  However my horse of a lifetime is definitely Brookfield Legend.  He could turn his hoof to anything and apart from coaching, he hunted and was shown in-hand.  He even played a highwayman’s horse on a number of occasions.  Eventually, the team became all homebred.

How it started was that I’d found some Hackney horses for Bill Ginns that were stallions.  At first, he showed them in coaching classes as stallions but eventually he had them all gelded, except Legend, because they were a bit of a handful.  Before then, Legend had done some show jumping when he’d been with Jimmy Carruthers in Northern Ireland.

I used to run the Hackney stand at the Royal Show every year for a week and do the breed displays and get people involved. Jimmy would bring his horse Step Right over for the ridden display because he was a lovely British Hackney.  But I got a call from Jimmy to say Step Right was lame so he couldn’t bring him, but he had a young riding stallion who could come. They came over with this horse, and I got increasingly worried that he was going to be a naughty boy because he was being a little bit full on around the mares!

We were underway with the breed’s display, and were in a collecting ring with all these other in-hand animals.  Legend was being ridden and getting a bit fidgety and I’ll never forget Jimmy just said to his rider, go and pop him over those practice fences in the next-door ring. They were the practice fences for a grade A show jumping competition, so they were massive!  And I watched open mouthed as Legend just pinged over them.

Anyway, luckily he didn’t work out with Bill, and I managed to buy him.  He’s still going strong, out in the field aged 32, and he was about 8 when I bought him.  By that stage, Bill had got me interested in coaching and we set about breeding our own team.  Brookfield Legend and Halloughton Heritage are the mother and father combination of the team.

Sarah adds – I first met Legend when he was a youngster (four I think) in Northern Ireland when I went over to help at one of their driving shows, Ballynahinch (?) – it was a long time ago! For a bit of fun (and no doubt to test the ‘carriage sales lady’), Jimmy suggested I drove his young Hackney stallion in the Ladies Whip class to a Gig.  So, after about 15 minutes of getting to know him in the collecting ring, I drove Legend in the show class and despite his tender age, he was a total gentleman.  He was calm and attentive, but when I asked for a bit more in trot, he gave it in some style but remained a delightful ‘ladies horse’.  We ended up coming second in quite a big class, only beaten by international judge and driver Sara Clinghan who was Irish National Champion at the time – so we were very pleased! 

Legend – who has always lived up to his name – has been an important horse not just for the Stocktons, but in preserving and promoting the Hackney breed.  He stood at AI Stallion Services in Staffordshire and even featured on the BBC programme Countryfile in 2013. 

It was really special to see him in the field recently while visiting Barbara and Rod.  Aged 32, he is still as handsome and proud as ever, having wintered out.  If ever a horse was appropriately named, it is Legend!