Belgravia

We called the beautiful Irish mare Belgravia.  Her name was a nod to one of the equine characters in Jilly Cooper’s Riders, which even though it had been published a decade previously was still one of my favourite books. The jet black four year old arrived, with a batch of others from Goresbridge sales in 1993.  By 1994 the youngsters we’d bought were beginning to be sold to new homes.

Belgravia, standing 16 hands and without so much as a single white hair anywhere, was, I thought, a perfect candidate for the Household Cavalry. I contacted the remount depot at Melton and a buyer and vet arrived soon after to assess her potential. She passed with flying colours and in September 1994, pregnant with my son, who was born at the end of the month, I delivered her to the depot at Melton.

And that was that. Belgravia was in the Army. She was given a new name and effectively disappeared from my life. That was until last year. I’d often wondered about what had become of her, but after seeing a tent, hosted by the Kings Troop at Burghley, I wandered over and began to ask how I could find out what happened to her.

I was given a contact email which I followed up on when I got home and discovered Belgravia had gone on to be given a new name, Warburg and had done both ceremonial and competition duties with her trooper and had since been retired to live with him. But other than that there was no information.

A year or so later I began to follow a Facebook page, Trace My Horse – Ireland and recently decided to post about the mare, asking if anyone knew about her. I thought possibly someone may know something, remember her or her trooper. What I didn’t expect was to actually find her and her rider and that she was still alive and living just a couple of hours up the road from me.

Within twenty four hours I was chatting to her rider who sent me pictures of her, happily retired and also of her on duty. They’d had a fantastic career together and she had been a great horse. The nicest part of the story, was that she was still owned by him and how clearly loved she was. My hope is to head up to see her, someday soon, twenty five years after I said goodbye to her in Melton.