THE KING'S HORSES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 129, 2 June 1937, Page 21

THE KING'S HORSES

£21,000 A YEAR

HISTORY OF ROYAL MEWS

;; The Kings -of! England ;used to go hawkingjover:those heathiS:and:swamps where Pimlico and Belgravia have been built. They kept their hawks.at Charing Crosslin a shed where they would jmoult or mew- So that shed was .called mews (says a writer in the ."Sunday Express") :;

Henry VIII was the first to do away hvith the hawks and stable his horses at Charing Cross, but the place was still called a mews, and when the stables shifted to Buckingham Palace last century the name of Royal mews went along with them.'There, in boxes lined with pale green tiles, anything up' to sixty horses champ proudly at the mangers and toss their manes when sthe electric clipper comes along. Fifty grooms and stablemen attend them at a cost of £21,000 every year. . • Most of these horses are bays, some from the famous Cleveland Stud established at Hampton Court by William 111, others of a'Dutch breed, betrayed by their names of Van Tromp and Zuyder Zee. Their long manes are plaited in blue.silk, twenty-two yards of silk to every horse. With them are the four pairs of Windsor greys that draw the Royal carriages to Ascot. ! The, harness and trappings of the carriage horses .are of red morocco leather embossed with gilded bronze. It takes three men to lift a single harness and adjust it. The harness weighs 1261b. The horses wear rubber pads upon their iron shoes. Edward Vll's coach was drawn by cream-coloured ponies bred, in, Hanover; they were originally brought over by the first George 200 years ago. Symbolising the white horsa which is the crest of Hanover, they carried the .minds of Englishmen ba6k to the days of the Anglo-Saxon invasion when the White Horse, still to be seen cut in the turf of our downs, was borne on the standards of the invading Saxon chiefs, Hengist and Horsa (whose names incidentally mean a horse). The Hanoverians claim to descend from1 the ancient Saxons. ■'...-.'. . . :

The cream-coloured ponies disappeared at the outbreak of the war, but other reminders of Edwardian days still linger with the King's horses in the Royal mews. Here is the Russian sociable in which Queen Alexandra ised to drive, and here the great saddle embossed and adorned with silver that was presented by the President of Mexico. Here is the slejgh in which Queen Victoria went riding from Balmoral. Here, too, stands the great 4£-ton gilt State coach with its Tritons and its painted panels that was built for King George 111, that bore six English Sovereigns to the Abbey to be crowned, the latest of them King George VI. • .