Crabbet Arabian Horses
By Rosemary Archer. Harwood has the distinction of being the oldest Arabian stud in Britain. It was founded in 1896 when Colonel F. Lyon of Horsham, Sussex, bought the four year-old mare Howa at the 8th Crabbet Sale. Howa was a great-granddaughter of the Blunt’s well-known mare Hagar, which they bought in Arabia and rode on their desert journeys, and her sire was Azrek, one of the Blunt’s finest imports.
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By Emma Bennett. One of the nicest aspects of the Painswick Lodge Stud is that after the death of Margaret Murray in 1967, several members of her family continued to breed from her bloodlines: her daughter, Iona Bowring, from the families of Gleaming Gold and Farette; her son and daughter-in-law, Pat and Caroline Murray, through Fari II and Gleaming Gold; and her niece, the Countess Lewenhaupt, through Rifari in Sweden.
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By Emma Bennett. Perhaps the inspiration to own and breed Arabs came from Margaret Murray seeing her mother drive a pair of South African Arabs in a phaeton, for in 1932 she bought a grey two-year-old colt from Mr. T.C. Armitage’s stud at Taunton in Somerset. This colt was Sahban, by *Aldebar 1864 (bred by the Prince of Wales) out of the Crabbet mare, Seriya (Skowronek x Somra). Sahban was the start of a long friendship between Margaret Murray and Tom Armitage who was president of the Arab Horse Society three times. Sabhan was used mainly on pony and Thoroughbred mares and only sired a few purebred foals as at that time Arabs were used mainly to improve other types of horses.
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The story of *COUNT DORSAZ and his descendants is one ideally suited to the writing of an entire book, rather than just an article. It is a tale of international success, as his descendants appear in pedigrees all over the world. His influence on the breed in America is a combination of chance circumstances: the exchange of breeding stock between the Crabbet and Hanstead studs, the sudden demise of Miss Gladys Yule shortly after the death of Lady Wentworth, and the foresight of the American breeder Bazy Tankersley in acquiring the cream of Crabbet and Hanstead horses, only available due to the high death duties on the estates of Lady Wentworth and Miss Yule.
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By Tiffani McCarthy. Like a modern-day Canterbury Tales, the devoted pilgrims flowed to Crabbet Park in Sussex for the opening of the Crabbet Convention. The only problem was that Crabbet Park is now less Canterbury Cathedral and more Bodiam Castle, just a shell of its former glory and purpose. This did not deter the delegates, however. This was the ancestral home of their beloved horses. For a few moments all of the memories from countless books and film clips and for a lucky few actual time spent at the stud came together through the magic grout of the imagination.
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By Eugenie M. McGuire. With a bit of planning my husband and I arranged to attend the Northwest CMK Symposium on August 26-28, 1994 in Albany, Oregon. The following are my personal impressions as I write this two months after attending the event. While I may mention specific people and horses please don’t feel offended if I have left you or your animals out. There were so many friendly people and good horses that it would be impossible to list them all.
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By Rosemary Archer. There were no horses in South Africa until the second half of the 17th century when some were brought in from Java. Two or three hundred years previously, Arab traders had taken horses to Java and it was the descendants of these which were the first to be imported into South Africa. During the two centuries following the arrival of these ‘Java’ horses, others came from Persia and then from South America, the latter being descended from Arabians and Barbs.
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By Arlene Magid. Lady Wentworth strove for decades to achieve what she considered to be the ultimate Arabian-a horse of type and extraordinary presence, with superb motion, and larger size to appeal to those for whom Arabians were a bit small. She bred her masterpiece in Indian Magic, foaled at Crabbet in 1944. He embodied the concept of the ‘Wentworth Superhorse’ and none who saw him could forget his dynamic qualities.
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By Alexia Ross. “That is the most beautiful little horse I have ever seen.” This was the comment of Sir Alfred Munnings on seeing Naseel at Roehampton. A legend in his own time, Naseel was one of the few examples of close double breeding to Skowronek to remain in the British Isles. Yet, circumstances conspired to make his descendants today more conspicuous for quality than quantity.
Continue ReadingBy Rosemary Archer. As an old pure breed the Arabian is extremely prepotent, and for centuries has been used up-grade, with the result that there is hardly a breed of light horse that does not contain some Arab blood – the most outstanding breed to evolve from Arabian sources is the Thoroughbred.
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