Chasing more horse ghosts in London.
Category Archives: Urban Equines
A Street Filled with 102 Horses
From Tom Crewe’s review of A Very Queer Family Indeed: Sex, Religion and the Bensons in Victorian Britain in the London Review of Books: “At 11am on 22 November 1827 Francis Place, the reformer and radical, stuck his head out of his bedroom window in Charing Cross and put down on paper the activity …
The Flesh of Foals
When the 2013 horsemeat scandal broke I was surprised and then realised I had nothing to be surprised about. By that stage I’d been researching the history of horsemeat on and off for seven years for The Age of the Horse, and I’d noticed a pattern going back centuries both to these episodes and to …
Haunted by Horses in St Petersburg
Last weekend I travelled to St Petersburg to start research on a new book and I thought I’d share my equestrian shots. I was only in this fascinating, complicated city for two and a half days and did not venture out of the very heart of it but I still found some horse history of …
Another Urban Stable Under Threat – this time in California
Cliff Yamashita, a retired tow truck driver, owns Miley and her new colt, Titan. Like most of his fellow boarders, he likes to go riding at nearby Point Pinole Regional Shoreline. He said he would probably have to sell both animals if he gets kicked out. “I can’t afford the other stables,” he said. “Nobody …
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Clever Hans: A Horse, a House and a Little History
Wilhelm von Osten was born into the German squirearchy in 1838 and went on to work as a maths teacher. He moved to the eastern Berlin district of Prenzlauer Berg in 1866 and purchased a house at 10 Griebenowstraße. A befitted his background, he was a keen rider and huntsman with an appreciation of horses. …
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Bianca Jagger Arrives at Studio 54 on a White Horse
New York, May 1977. The horse was actually ridden into the club by someone else, who was “dressed” as Lady Godiva. And yes, it was on tranquillisers!
Horses in the Thames
The Thames at Lambeth, 1934. A barge is unloaded and the goods taken away by cart.
Hi-Vis for Your Hoss in 1937
Those working horses were saints.
The Horse Ghosts of East London
I had some time to kill near Liverpool Street Station in London yesterday and remembered a quest I’d started to put together earlier this year, before it was cut short by health problems. In The Age of the Horse I’ve tried to write a sweeping, single-take overview of all the ways in which horses powered Britain in the nineteenth …