IN SEARCH OF WALES’ GYSPY HORSE KING
He’s the man who gets blamed for the hundreds of horses left to roam scrubland and streets around South Wales. Laura Clements went looking for Tom Price...
PEOPLE in the Vale of Glamorgan village of Wick say they are used to seeing herds of horses running loose through their wellkept village.
Mostly big, heavy-set cobs with long flowing manes, they used to rampage through the village, causing chaos and damage.
Ask around, and most locals say they belong to Tom Price – a gypsy horse breeder who indiscriminately breeds animals to be flogged for pennies.
It isn’t just Wick. Ask about any of the horses spotted grazing on scrubland, or roaming roads from Cardiff to Bridgend, and you’ll soon have someone suggest: “They’re probably Tom Price’s.”
The man they refer to might live in Wick, but after a day chatting to residents it is soon clear that while people might know the name, very few, if any, actually know who he really is.
They are quick to comment on the fly-grazing, they can all remember his conviction for animal cruelty and they all know he spent time in prison.
Some even remember the fact he was cited when Wales introduced a new law to tackle fly-grazing and abandoned horses.
But few know he is also the man who once sold the most expensive colt at Appleby Horse Fair. Or the man who founded the gypsy cob breed and exported it to America in the 1990s. Or the man who used to breed some of the finest gypsy horses in the world.
Arguably, you could call Tom Price Wales’ very own gypsy horse king.
In a bid to find out more, we spent a day in Wick.
Surely if we could find the horses, then we would find “Tommy Price”, we thought.
In the end, we never found the horses, but we did eventually find Tommy. And what he said might surprise you.
At the village’s Star Inn, the few in the bar knew Tom, but refused to be drawn on him. Mostly, they knew about his horses and how he had been jailed six years ago.
In 2012, the RSPCA reckoned Tom Price was keeping around 2,500 horses across South Wales. Inevitably, there was friction between the Romany gypsy and those who lived near the grazing horses. Tommy was handed an anti-social behaviour order (Asbo) for allowing horses to fly-graze and stray on to roads in the Vale of Glamorgan.
A couple in Wick, enjoying lunch al fresco outside another village pub on the day we visited, said they could remember a time when 60, 70, even 80 horses used to rampage through the village.
“People lost respect when he started overbreeding,” they said. “The herds used to cause damage and break off wing mirrors as they went up through the village, although that doesn’t happen like it used to, since he went to prison.”
In July 2013, Price was jailed for eight months and banned from keeping horses for five years after being found guilty of 57 animal welfare and cruelty charges.
His son, Thomas Hope Price, from Rover Way in Cardiff, was also found guilty.
District judge at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court Bodfan Jenkins said Price was running a “large and wealthy concern” breeding gypsy cobs and the conditions they were kept in were “shocking and horrendous” and “almost beggared belief”.
In total, the RSPCA removed 400 horses from Tom Price and ended up putting a quarter of them down.
The news that more than 100 horses had been shot sparked a global petition which was sent to the RSPCA.
It read: “Tom Price’s Gypsy Horse Herd is being killed off by the hundreds (reports say) by the RSPCA in Europe.
“Here, in America, these horses sell for 1,000’s of dollars all day long, some in excess of $50,000. We have so few of these beautiful creatures here in America... We will lose bloodlines that we cannot replace if all of Tom Price’s herd are slaughtered.”
It highlighted how, far from indiscriminate breeding, Tom Price did know what he was doing with his horses.
In a separate court hearing, for breach of the Asbo in December 2012, he was also accused of “a harassment of landowners”.
He was told by District Judge John Charles he had “not shown a shred of respect for anybody and not shown any remorse”.
“Landowners were powerless to deal with your fly-grazing activities and they were virtually intimidated by you,” Mr Charles told him.
Despite the 2013 animal disqualification order, Tom Price was arrested in August 2016 for dealing in horses at least 11 times afterwards.
Some 70 of his horses were seized and the police investigation proved he had persisted in flygrazing in various locations throughout the Vale and Bridgend, without the permission of the landowners.
A criminal behaviour order was slapped on Price, which banned him from being in a vehicle towing or transporting horses and herding horses from public or private land, until his ban was up in January 2019.
After a fruitless couple of hours asking about him in the village, we drew a blank on his whereabouts. His last address given in court appeared empty when we arrived, so we headed back to Cardiff.
But barely five minutes back in the office, I had a phone call.
A voice on the other end of the line asked: “You’ve been asking for Tommy Price this afternoon? I’m his partner, what do you want to know?”
She invited us into their home, in Pencoed.
A quietly-spoken man, Tom welcomed us into the front room of his semidetached house.
“I always wanted to own loads of those horses,” he said. “It was a childhood dream of mine which came true, but then the problems started and they’ve been there ever since.”
Tom never went to school and never learned to read or write.
“You have to be four times as clever to live as a gypsy,” said the 55-yearold. “I started buying and selling horses when I was eight years old, and I learned my lessons early on.
“When I was 10, my uncle bought a foal for £6 in Abergavenny and sold it to me less than two weeks later for £13.
“When I went to pick it up, it was dead and full of maggots so it had clearly been dead for a long time before I had even bought and paid for it.
“It taught me to be extra-cautious, no matter who I was dealing with.”
For Tom, the horses were all about keeping the gypsy tradition alive: “The only thing I know is horses. It’s the only thing I wanted to do. I was the first person to send the gypsy cob over to the USA.
“I’ve been invited to judge the breed all over the world – in America, Denmark and Holland – all based on my reputation as a breeder.
“I even went to Kentucky as a guest of honour and received a plaque for my contribution to the breed.”
He was breeding Gypsy Vanners, a type of horse that was viewed as a valuable status symbol in the Romany gypsy culture.
As he gained a reputation for being a prolific breeder, he became a kind of celebrity in the gypsy horse world.
It was Tom who raised a young horse called The Log, who grew up to be the highest-priced colt in the UK and was purchased as a yearling for £12,500 at Appleby Horse Fair.
For years, he exported quality horses to America as well as Europe.
“I started exporting horses to the Continent 20 years ago. At first I was just chancing it, trying to find someone to buy the horses because over here in the UK, people didn’t know much. I knew that they were worth more than what I was getting so I went over there to try and sell them.
“I was going to the markets over there and soon people started coming to me and asking. It meant I didn’t have to go to the markets any more.
“I was selling all over to dealers and people became my friends. It went from strength to strength and my name got stronger.”
There is a hint of pride in what he achieved, and he mentions again that he has a plaque given to him by the Gypsy Vanner Horse Society.
I sense he is aggrieved about the perceived injustices of his horses being taken away from him in 2013. He reels off names of people who had done him wrong without a moment’s hesitation and can remember exactly how much he paid for bales of haylage almost 10 years ago. I get the sense Tommy Price holds grudges for some time.
It is true then, that he owned and bred some of the best gypsy horses ever produced. But as one breeder said to me: “Those few will never make up for the hundreds so cruelly treated.”
But what did you do with more than 2,000 horses, I asked. Did they go into the meat trade?
How does he respond to allegations like the one made by a breeder in an online forum in 2013, who said: “I can remember Tom from years back before gypsy cobs were anything more than cobs bred and sold by gypsies – if you get what I mean.
“He was never the sharpest pencil in the box but he did breed some really nice cobs – anything c**p went to slaughter, I guess the introduction of passports and microchipping might have affected him with the meat trade.
“The whole US craze and some of them making him out to be some sort of a ‘king of cobs’ went to his head, he got greedy, the market crashed and he didn’t have the sense to see it.”
Talk of slaughtering horses is when Tom gets the most animated – the mere suggestion causes him to bristle.
“No,” he answered. “I never sold my horses for meat. That was my problem, why I ended up with so many – I would never send them away to be killed.
“My mother was a proper Romany gypsy and she used to say nothing good ever came of people who mistreated their horses. And she was right – I’ve never seen anyone who
treats horses badly do well,” he said.
With so many animals, it was inevitable they would get out from time to time, said Tom, by way of explaining why his horses were allegedly spotted “rampaging” through lanes.
But the rest of his “troubles” were the result of prejudice and persecution, he claimed.
They all started with a local haylage dealer reneging on a deal over the cost of bales in 2011.
“I’d never been in any trouble before that, let alone locked up,” he said.
He was subsequently accused of causing criminal damage to the farmer’s property, but maintains his innocence.
“They said I cut his wire, but if I was going to do that, I would have cut it into lots of little pieces.”
That resulted in the restraining order the following April and subsequently a breach of that order after he was accused of making threats.
“All I said was I didn’t want to speak to that particular farmer ever again nor would I buy another bale off him again,” he protested. “But they said that was an indirect threat.”
He has an explanation for all of his offences, saying people had a vendetta against him and wanted him out of the area.
The cases of neglect were blown out of all proportion, he said, saying the horses were given feed and water.
He vehemently denied that his animals are left to fly-graze, saying they are all on his own private land or land rented by him. The horses he was supposedly dealing were never his, he says, and had been signed over to his son.
He does not entertain any thought that he may have done wrong. He says he has done nothing for the last five years apart from “look after a few chickens and sheep”.
The loss of his animals and his bloodlines might have hurt him, but it hurt others too.
“For me to be caught for neglecting my animals – it hurt me to death,” he said.
“They couldn’t have hurt me any more. To think that people all over the world thought I was capable of that...” he tailed off.
“The trouble I got into didn’t just finish me, it finished the US dealers as well. Everything collapsed because I was this trouble person. People didn’t want to buy horses associated with me, but until then, they were buying most of my best stallions.
“They’ve ruined me – the police, the RSPCA, all of them. I had more money when I was 10 years old than I do now, and that’s the honest truth.”
But then his eyes brightened, and he said: “But I’ve got a plan. I saw a horse on the internet and I thought, when my ban is up that’s the horse for me. He’s called Galway Boss and he’s going to be the one who starts us off again.”
It was another glimpse of that childish side to Tommy Price and it is clear to see breeding good animals is what he is all about.
Either that, or it was the thought that he can finally give the law two fingers now his ban is up and carry on just like he used to.
Whether in pride or excitement, or perhaps both, he turned to me and asked if I wanted to take a look at Galway Boss before I left. He was in a stable on a small plot he had, which he hadn’t told me about, he said.
We followed Tom, Luanne – his partner of 11 years – and his three-yearold daughter Maggie in their truck to a large yard in the Vale of Glamorgan.
We could hear Galway Boss snorting and whinnying in his stall before we could see him. Leading him out, chest puffed out and a faraway look in his eye as he made his pony stand, Tommy could not have looked any prouder.