Horse At Work Gallery

The line often blurs, but the theme of this portfolio is primarily horses doing everyday work to earn a living, as opposed to sport and play. Some aspects of this work have completely disappeared, but the horse is still employed to do a wide variety of jobs. And who knows, the future may hold a few surprises. I have lived in my present home for more than 20 years, and for the first time recently a ‘rag and bone man’ with horse and cart has come by. Of course he was not interested in rags or bones, it was scrap metal he was after.

In the UK the pit ponies have now gone, although the last deep-mine pit ponies did not finish work until 1994 at Ellington colliery in Northumberland. In South Wales, they continued to work at small private coalmines until 1999. Similarly, the sea coal ponies have all but disappeared (see also my sea coal portfolio). All the other UK scenes featured here can still be seen today if you know where to look. Ponies have traditionally been used to carry down the deer carcasses following a shoot on the Scottish estates. For a while, particularly on lower ground, it seemed their work may be taken over by quad bikes, but this change was not popular with the paying clients, and if anything the use of the ponies is increasing again. It is a similar story with the logging horses where the environmental benefits of the horses over heavy machinery are now being recognised in some quarters.

Travel abroad has enabled me to photograph more subjects long since gone from these shores, such as the horse tramway at brickworks in Poland, which amazingly survived into the 21st century.

I am always pleased to hear from anyone who knows of appropriate subjects for me to add to this project, and I am always available to undertake any horse photography, whether it falls within this project or not.