Anthony Barker
Professional equestrian and amateur thespian who rode in the procession on Coronation Day
ANTHONY BARKER, who has died aged 83, was a wellknown North Yorkshire horseman who taught generations of young ladies to ride at Queen Mary’s School, Duncombe Park.
The Barker family has kept livery stables in the town of Helmsley – surrounded by the Duncombe Park estate – since 1875, when Anthony Barker’s widowed great-grandmother Annie left her nearby farm to become landlady of the Royal Oak posting house in the town’s marketplace. Her son Tom was a successful horse dealer and breeder; one of Tom’s four sons, Stanley Barker, became a renowned huntsman of the Pytchley, captured in a painting by Sir Alfred Munnings.
Duncombe Park was let by its owner, the Earl of Feversham, to become Queen Mary’s boarding school for girls in 1925. Tom Barker was the school’s riding master with his son Kit, Anthony’s father, as his assistant. When Kit suffered a riding injury in 1955, Anthony returned from service in the Household Cavalry to take over.
After the school moved to Baldersby near Thirsk in 1985, Anthony continued teaching many of its pupils as well as other novices of all ages who came to his riding school. For half a century, Barker and his string of horses and ponies, carrying riders of all shapes, sizes and abilities, were a daily sight walking through the town and cantering across the adjacent parkland. A man of large presence and sunny personality, with a fund of good stories, he was a pillar of town and country life.
Anthony Christopher Barker was born at Helmsley on March 27 1934, and was educated at St Peter’s School, York. He left school to work in the stables and at 18 – a strapping sixfooter with a reference from Lord Feversham for his horsemanship and good character – he joined the Royal Horse Guards, to spend three enjoyable years as a trooper on ceremonial duties in London.
Most memorably, Barker rode in the Coronation procession in June 1953, when two troops of Royal Horse Guards and two of Life Guards escorted the Queen’s carriage to and from the Abbey. His chief memories of the day were of constant rain tarnishing his breastplate and sword, and the radiant smile of the queen of Tonga, who refused to have the hood of her carriage raised against the downpours.
Barker was blooded with the Sinnington Hunt at the age of nine, and rode to hounds for a final time 60 years later, at what he called “the last proper meet” in Duncombe Park before the passage of the 2004 Hunting Act. His other passion was for the amateur stage.
In the celebrated Helmsley Festival Play of 1951, written by the art historian Herbert Read and performed by a large cast in the town’s ruined castle, he played the ill-fated Walter L’espec, son of the Norman knight whose castle it was; Anthony and Kit Barker were also called upon to joust on horseback, with sharp lances and no dividing wall between them.
Later Barker acted in many productions with the local Ryedale Players and with companies in Pickering and Scarborough. He loved musicals, taking leading roles in The Merry Widow, South Pacific and The King and I, but his equestrian calling prevented him from turning professional. He contemplated a late comeback when a new group formed in Helmsley in the 1990s, but was put off by being asked in a “workshop” to mime a tree.
His stables in the town were redeveloped into retail units as “Barker’s Yard”, but the riding school and livery enterprise continues in Duncombe Park under the management of his son Christopher.
Anthony Barker married, in 1965, Jane Robinson, who survives him with Christopher and their daughters Sarah and Emma.
Anthony Barker, born March 27 1934, died January 23 2018