I have my criticisms of my mother, and in many ways she was an abomination, but she did make sure I learnt to swim, and – more unusually – to ride.
My sister and I were horse fanatics. Our riding lessons involved a long, meandering bus ride through the lanes of Bedfordshire, and I remember my mum carried snacks for us, which must have passed for lunch. I carried my own hat, which was easily the most lovely thing I owned. The inside had a silky coloured lining and the best smell in the world: the smell of riding. With hindsight, and from catching a breath of it occasionally when unpacking parcels, I think that must have been glue: the glue holding the shock-absorbing foam in place.
When the bus finally dropped us off, it took some guts to walk into the stable yard, full of ponies and girls we didn’t know. I seem to remember the occasional teenage boy mucking out and tacking up, but it was mainly akin to a harem buzzing around the owner of the school. We were devoted to him, grooming the ponies, polishing the tack, raking out the muck.
Strawberry and Puffet at Bill Juffs' yard © Huguenot Jo
My childhood also gave me the gift of insomnia, and in the dark reaches of the night I like to roam the internet. I found through Facebook that there is a Museum of the Horse, in Tuxford, Nottinghamshire; and a private Facebook group for Photographs and Memories of Wootton, the village where I learnt to ride. Having found it, I joined at once, and peered at the many old pictures of Wootton to see if I could recognise buildings we used to ride past. I couldn’t: mainly we used to charge around the edges of farmers’ fields, not along the hard main road. I felt guilty intruding: I wasn’t born in the village and I don’t live there now.
Then someone put an old postcard onto the Facebook site, a composite of different views, with a shot of riding school horses in the centre. Immediately there was an online discussion of who the pictured riders were, and the names of the horses. There were a few reminiscences about the stables, and I thought of my little, private hoard of photos which I could share. I was too shy.
A few months later, the Museum of the Horse posted a photo with the question: does anyone remember Bill Juffs? He was the owner of our riding school, and, it turns out, active in Bedfordshire’s Oakley Hunt. Immediately there was a flood of responses, all from grown-up women with childhood memories identical to mine. Yes, we worked in the yard in exchange for free rides; yes, we remember the gymkhanas; yes, we can still name the horses; yes, we still ride.
I shared my photos. There was a swell of passion for Bill, and for the horses we so loved. The best horses have ebullience and personality, so that riding them requires rapport as well as courage. All of us had begged to ride the feistiest and fastest ponies: Bill only let us get on the most exciting rides when we were proficient in clinging on, able to sit out the sly bucks and swerves intended to throw us off.
I don’t know why my mother was prepared to pay for riding lessons out of her savings when we were dirt poor. I think she may have felt it raised us up above the social level of the other children in our village, above the tenant farmers’ daughters who just got on ponies kept with the cows and taught themselves to ride, or were taught by their fathers. When it was such an easy thing to do for ordinary villagers, it must have seemed very extravagant to go to the other side of our county to have lessons.
"The Farmers" by William Otway McCannell (1883-1969): Museum of Farnham © the artist's estate
My nocturnal internet searching made me wonder whether Bill Juffs had been memorialised in any way. I looked on the Bedfordshire Archives site. Its archivists are earnest and meticulous, but information on individual villages is variable. There is a great deal on their website about the village of Wootton, but not a word about its historic role as a Mecca for horse-lovers. The riding school is now closed; there is still a sign to it, even though Bill and his horses are long gone.
The title is from Henry V by William Shakespeare
I remember Bill Juffs with great fondness. When I had been riding a couple of years, my parents gave in to endless pestering and agreed to buy me a pony. They knew nothing whatsoever about horses at that point, but were directed to Bill as the most trustworthy purveyor of ponies in the area. Unfortunately my father was rather optimistic about my abilities, and I was unceremoniously carted off through the middle of Wootton by Bills rather too spirited pony. He was very kind about it.
This didn’t put me off however and many years later, I had a job working for Peter Robeson, the showjumper, who would have been a bit younger than Bill. I got talking to Bill at a local show, and was just at the start of my life as a trainer of horses. Once again Bill was incredibly kind and gave me some of the best advice I have ever had about buying and selling. “People get too greedy” he said. “You just make sure that you make a couple of bob on each pony and you’ll never go wrong”. He was a gentleman, and that so many owe a good start in their lifetime with horses to him, is as good a testament as there can be.
Sadly the world he inhabited is long gone, together with the riding school, but what a time it was.
Thank you for this beautiful paragraph. I love your description of Bill as “purveyor of ponies”. To me, he was always kind and thoughtful, carefully judging my progress to see if I could handle a more feisty horse. I had a total crush on a dark bay called Dolly – I rode her once in a gymkana – one of my best memories. Thank you again for writing this, it brings Bill and all his horses right back to me.
I can so relate to this, and thanks for sharing it. My own mother was far from easy, but at least she taught me to ride, and shared my passion for horses. I have hardly ridden for the past two decades, but re-discovering my love of riding has been pretty much the only good thing to come out of lockdown.
A huge thing to be grateful to our mothers for. I found it inspiring to find that so many of us old Bill Juffs gals are still riding, into our fifties and sixties. One of the riding school instructors was pictured in our chat – on a horse at 99 years old.
What a lovely story, very evocative of a time when every little girl regardless of class or family income dreamed of a horse. Mine was truely a fanatsy pony, a palomino with a white blaze on his nose I rode hime to and from school in homage to the hero of the books I was currently engrossed in about a Texas Ranger. My daughters, brought up in rural Wales, had the alternative experience; pony treks with Riding for the Disabled, friends with a pony in a field just there for the riding and other friends mucking out stables for the free rides offered in return for their willing labour. I grew up to be nervous around the real thing and have never, and will never, mount one, they have all the confidence that comes with familiarity.
That’s why I’m so grateful to my mum for opening up the world of riding while I was still a child and quite fearless.
Palomino was the dream colour – I’m not sure that I’ve ever ridden one! I like a nice dun myself, or a dapple grey.
What a great opening. Your abomination of a mother and your insomnia brought on by a dark childhood. What?? Sounds so wonderfully ‘film noir’ I want to know more. The lessons seem so dissonant with the rest of your upbringing. I wonder whether your mother had longed to ride as a child.
I loved this piece. Your research is so creative and meandering, taking us to all such diverse sources. And I love the mingling of literary quotes, family pictures and pieces of art all woven into the story, which is as ever, a deeply evocative, gripping read.
It is funny how our relationship with horses is class-defining. I envied the wealthier horse-owning girls at my school who went to gymkhanas and point-to-points in the holidays and took lessons in term-time. I still remember the smell of boot polish and horse manure that marked out Saturday mornings as we juniors sat in the basement cleaning our Prefects’ boots in a ghastly mimicry of the boys’ schools’ fagging systems. I left that school before I was old enough to have my own boots cleaned – had I been able to afford the lessons.
My parents, despite being financially challenged from time to time – who needed aircraft engineers in the fifties? – still took me for riding lessons in the school holidays. I envied the girls who lived nearby and managed to stay long enough to do some stable work in exchange for free lessons. They were the elite of the stables marked by their knowledge rather than me, by my splendid jodhpurs and beautiful black velvet silk-lined riding hat – all appearance and no essence. I ruined my hat one year by storing conkers in it, distraught to discover they had all gone mouldy.
One summer my father came riding with me for the first time when I was about 12 years old. The stables were set in the Epping Forest and all rides were through beech/birch woods. As we cantered along my father’s horse decided to try to unseat him, choosing to run under a low branch. My father just jumped off neatly, ran, and jumped back on, all without slowing his mount. I was in awe and asked him where he had learned that feat of horsemanship – parents always know nothing of course. It was my first lesson in family history. My father had grown up on a horse. My grandfather had been a cavalry officer in WW1 and became a career soldier, posted round the world, always with his horse. I still have his 1937 War Office issue ‘Manual of Horsemastership etc’. I remember seeing a little picture of my Dad aged about three, in India, a tiny ram-rod straight figure sitting alone on top of an enormous warhorse, confidently holding the reins. Small wonder that along with my schooling, my grandfather had paid for the riding lessons.
That is such a poignant story! I’m so sorry about your hat. What an extraordinary thing for your father to be able to do – such horsemanship!
Jo, this is such an interesting blog, and the smells and scenes so well evoked. Although we owned our small farm in Australia, I was one of those children who just got on one of the ponies we kept with the cows and sheep and taught myself to ride (with a bit of advice from my Dad and older siblings). I used to roam for hours bareback on our pony named Jacky, who delighted in rubbing me up against fences or taking me under tree boughs low enough to knock me off his back. But mostly we rode to round up the cattle, collect the mail from the post office 12 miles away, or to visit neighbours 2 or 3 miles up the road. We rather despised the wealthier property owners whose girls wore riding hats and jodhpurs, and who took part in competitions in the gymkhanas. For us riding was for work, not for show! Interesting how class and riding compared in Australia. Twenty years later in Kent I found myself taking my daughter for riding lessons and to spend days helping out in the stables. Guess we had moved up in the world…
So interesting, Lyn, that you can perfectly illustrate my point about farmers’ daughters! I envy you the hours spent roaming bareback on Jacky. I think if you’ve had that experience, you do want to take your children to learn to ride.
My mother certainly seemed to like horses, and to admire their beauty, but she had never herself ridden at all.
I too was a horse-mad child! Oh those happy days of walking up the field in the sleet with a head collar hidden behind your back, and a handful of horse nuts to try and tempt the most wily pony in the stable to let you catch him. Hanging around hopefully for free rides, and being told to get on the one that had just bucked an inexperienced rider off, and bring him or her back to order again. I’ve also done internet searches for the old riding schools,and in one case like you found a lot of memories posted on a local FB page. In some ways I suppose it was rather exploitative. It sounds as though your maitre d was a good owner and worth admiring but a couple of the ones that I slaved for weren’t, and with hindsight I think they exploited that enthusiasm.
Yes, that’s right: the potential for exploitation was there. And yet, on the other hand, I have read feminist writing about how liberating it was for women to be able to ride – especially having the freedom to roam where you wanted, unchaperoned and unsupervised, wherever you and the horse wanted to go. No-one asked where you were going: you were just exercising the horse.
Another really fascinating blog, Jo. I loved reading it and agree with Hephzi that the strength of the piece lies in the way that you evoke the past in all its sensory detail. It is a strong beginning – that first sentence is a shock! That word ‘abomination’ packs quite a punch and seems to be a departure in tone from the tone of your other blogs. Do you see it that way? Also, I am interested in the class aspect of this situation. When you reached the stables and walked into the yard, did you feel that it was a different world for you in terms of the class of the girls there? Did your mother always accompany you and therefore watch you riding? Was that quite a sacrifice for her in terms of time and effort, do you think? All fascinating! When you write that insomnia was a ‘gift’ from your childhood that too begs a lot of questions… I love the idea of you finding all those connections on the internet. It seems from your blog that finding all those women who have similar memories is a source of validation for you. I wonder if you see it that way. I think that’s enough questions for today!
I do feel validated by the other women on the internet, but more than that is a feeling of contributing to a collective sense of joy. It’s a bit like starting a dance, and everyone joining in. We were each putting our clutch of photos out like a hand of cards.
My mother did watch when we were being taught in a ring, but mostly we were careering round fields on hacks – organised rides – so she must have gone off for solitary walks during that time. She cuts a lonely figure in my imagination. It will have been a sacrifice for her in terms of time and effort, and – more surprisingly, given that we had so little – in terms of money.
The comments by Lyn and Ann cover the class aspect well, I think. It was a puzzling world: who was up, and who was down? Did smart jodhpurs mean you were better, or worse? In one way, horsemanship was a leveller – if you could manage a horse well, then it didn’t matter who you were or where you came from. It was in the latter spirit that we shared our photos, and Bill Juffs certainly treated us all equally. He was a rough diamond himself.
The joy of reminiscing about days gone by. Its one of the pleasures of old age.
Well yes, but I’m not quite an old dear yet…or if I am, please don’t tell the horses I ride!
The internet does make reminiscing so much easier, and it’s simple to find long-lost pals to do it with. I’ll be returning to the subject, that’s for sure.
What a wonderful piece, so full of your vividly remembered childhood that I almost feel I am there with you. The smell of your hat warm from your head (scent is too rarified a word for the glue you were inhaling), galloping around the edges of fields and idolising your teacher – and the feeling of discomfort that you didn’t quite fit in with all the other girls. The photo is beautiful – what wonderful straight backs (unlike the farmer in the painting, a lovely touch). Which one is you? And your middle-of-the-night internet roaming round Wootton where you don’t quite feel you belong – a melancholy touch. I’m glad you shared your photos – and I’m sure the Bedfordhire Archives would love to hear from you. And the mysterious, inexplicable gift from your mother of the chance to develop such a close relationship with those beautiful horses.
I love going back to those days in my mind’s eye, and that photo takes me right there. I am the blonde one, on Strawberry.