In England — Now!: A Rescue Centre… for Rocking Horses

Celebrating English achievement, enterprise and creativity in the 21st century

Aspecial pleasure for me when as a child I was staying with cousins who lived some 60 miles away was to be invited to have a ride on the old rocking horse kept stored in their top-floor attic. Dapple, as they had called him because of his colouring, was very good-natured, later even putting up with the weight of young teenagers who liked to treat the attic as their retreat. Dapple was fortunate, for having been kept stored safely away, warm and dry, he remained in good condition and was ready and waiting to be introduced in due course to my cousins’ own children and to provide pleasure for a second generation.

Not all these family favourites enjoyed such a favourable retirement. They could be banished to an outdoor “stable” as the children grew up, sharing a garden shed with various bicycles, lawnmowers and the like, until the thought occurred to the family that perhaps he — or she — could be just the means of entertaining visiting grandchildren.

However long the interval of time, a means of rehabilitation is available — supplied by a rocking-horse restorer such as Beatrice Legay, whose Tetbury Rocking Horse Works in Gloucestershire offers just that service. Beatrice started her specialist business nine years ago — actually in Stroud, a short distance from Tetbury. “It is quite a niche market,” she says, “and I am kept busy seven days a week.”

She also makes new rocking horses, for which she has her own particular style. “I shape the head to give the horse a kind of turn of the 19th- to 20thcentury style, with a rather narrow head like that of a greyhound, as that was the way artists were picturing horses at that time,” she says.

The horses on which she works may well be of that vintage. They come to her of all ages, sizes, and from all parts of the country.

“I gain a lot of business through clients seeing my advertising on my website,” Beatrice is pleased to say. “They make contact and either they come to see me or I take samples of my work to them so that they can see what restoration can achieve.”

Is that a heavy task for her, loading and unloading the horses into her transport?

“Not at all,” she says, “They are much lighter than you think, as the bodies are usually hollow.”

Beatrice is French but has lived in England since the age of 19, and this is where she wants to stay. It was here that she began the greater part of her working life, but having gone on to marry and have a family it was not until the youngest of her five children was old enough for her to return to combining family life with her career that she took up carpentry seriously.

“My work has always been craftinspired,” she says. “When it was time to return to the world of work I took formal training at the Women’s Workshop in Birmingham in carpentry and other practical skills. That was absolutely brilliant.

“I went on to take a course at South Birmingham College which covered a variety of trade skills — carpentry, plumbing, painting and decorating, tiling, plastering and bricklaying. I studied up to a level three City and Guilds certificate in carpentry.

“When I started working I did anything — changing windows, doors, working on kitchens and bathrooms, any size project. I have always worked mainly on my own as when you have small children you have to work around your own family commitments,” she explains. This was also the reason that she decided it would be helpful if she could make her home her working base, and it resulted in the launch of Tetbury Rocking Horse Works.

Carpentry is very much a part of the restoration process. “The