This is a photo of my grandfather, Jack Bubb, in his career as a horse breaker. He followed his father and grandfather before him as horse breakers. Although he owned various cars, he never learnt to drive any of them, but his skill as a horse breaker was unsurpassed. He suffered as many broken bones as a movie stunt man in his career and said that “horses are often highly temperamental”. Many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of horses passed through his hands during his career, and the Bubbs have broken animals in for owners from Lands End to John O Groats and from as far away as Galway. Before the First World War he broke in horses for the local Territorial unit stationed at Clarendon Place Drill Hall.
Scores of carriage horses
I remember that the big double break we used to have; you could put one horse or two in it. We would put a pair of horses in it, with one trained next to the one we were breaking in. My grandfather said it would take about six weeks to break in a horse (that’s if nobody tried to break it in before!). In the old days he got many scores of carriage horses to break in every year. That was in the days of phaetons, landaus, broughams and other horse drawn carriages provided a fine sight in Leamington as they carried the gentry around, he told me.
In procession from Stoneleigh Abbey to Warwick Castle
A way with horses runs in the family; a family story is told how once George Henry Bubb rode Postillion for Queen Victoria’s coach. On June 16th 1858 the Queen and Prince Albert drove in procession from Stoneleigh Abbey to Warwick Castle. George was then aged 18.
His skill has continued in me; I used to brake in horses myself and I used to take a horse to Warwick races for the starter and the last one in my family to follow me is Joanna, my grand daughter, she followed on as a rider of horses. So our relationship with horses has lasted through five generations.
Comments
Add a comment about this page