The Beloved Beswick 818 Shire Mare

Beswick Shire Mare, Model No, 818

Like many collectors, I have a soft spot for the Beswick (England) Model No. 818, the Shire Mare. And what's not to love?

My own copy of the 818 Shire came from Vickie Neiduski, one of my longest-time, dearest friends in the model horse hobby. 

As a Shire should be, she's big. She's strong. She has a Presence.

"Lincolnshire Peggy," the name given to my copy of the Beswick 818 Shire Mare. Yes, we hobbyists often give names to our model horse figurines.

In the case of my older (perhaps early to mid-1950s?) 818 Shire, she has a reddish-brown coat with a pink nose and mouth. 

Note the detail of the hair between the lower cheek and the chin. 

A gold Beswick backstamp on one hoof, and a hole in the sole of all four hooves.

Like so many of the nicest Beswick animals, she is smiling. This old 818 Shire Mare also has a carefully painted mane.

And eyelashes. 

Issued in a variety of colours

The 818 Shire Mare was one of the earliest Beswick horses, first issued in 1940, in the gloss brown colourway. She also came in the rare glossy Rocking Horse Grey colourway around 1939-1940 as well.

Longtime hobby friend Lois Bennington owns two of the RHG Shire mares. The variations in their hand-painted finishes are fascinating.

Beswick 818 Shire Mare
"Whitehall Simaril," owned by Lois Bennington.
Photo used with permission.

Beswick 818 Shire Mare
"Whitehall Nauglamir," owned by Lois Bennington.
Photo used with permission.

In addition to Rocking Horse Grey and Brown, the 818 Shire Mare was issued in several other colourways over the decades, in matte and gloss finish, and also in harness. The design eventually became part of the Royal Doulton line (as DA #43).

Beswick 818 Shire Mare in the regular gloss grey, issued 1961-1989.

Her place, early in the Beswick horse timeline

The first horse produced by Beswick was No. 701, a portrait model of the champion Thoroughbred racehorse Bois Roussel, by Arthur Gredington, first issued in 1939. (Gredington would redesign the "Bois Roussel" mold in 1947.) 

The real "Bois Roussel," published in The Age, 1938.

Left: Beswick No. 701 "Bois Roussel," second version, brown gloss colourway, issued 1947-1989. Center: Beswick No. 701 "Bois Roussel." first version, issued @1939-1940 through 1947. Both are owned by Vickie Neiduski. Photo used with permission.

Then came several foals, followed by the 818 Shire Mare, then many more horses and foals of various breeds or no given breed at all. We don't see another named Beswick horse until No. 1265, the Arab "Xayal," in 1952. Subsequently, still more Beswick horses were inspired by and named after real equines.

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Possible inspiration?

I always assumed that Arthur Gredington's design for the Beswick 818 Shire Mare was based on an anonymous Shire from sometime before the mold's issue date of 1940. Or perhaps he used the characteristics of more than one mare to create a composite model. 

But the other day I found a photograph of one particular Shire mare from the mid-1920s that made me do a double-take. The 818 Shire Mare looks like very much like her.

Erfyl Lady Grey. 

I don't think there's any way to find out whether Arthur Gredington was inspired by this mare. But if he was looking for an example of the best Shire mare of recent years, she would have more than sufficed.

She was Erfyl Lady Grey, foaled in Wales in 1915 and described by many sources as quite simply the best of the best of her day, "the grandest Shire mare ever seen."  In her heyday, Lady Grey's photographs appeared in newspapers and magazines like Country Life and Illustrated London News. 

Country Life, March 8, 1924

Country Life, July 12, 1924

Illustrated London News, March 7, 1925

Judges and horsemen thought she was just about perfect. Author A. G. Holland noted:

"Many good judges consider that the best of all Shire mares seen out was that great winner Erfyl Lady Grey by Moors Kitchener. Judges could not fault her, she was as near perfection as possible. Thrice female champion in London, and twice at the Royal Show, Erfyl Lady Grey was possessed of great substance, wonderful breed character, conformation, and activity, yet with all she had great feminine quality....A glorious type of mare in every way." 

   -- from "The Shire Horse," in The Book of the Horse, edited by Brian Vesey-Fitzgerald, London, 1946

From The Story of the Horse, by Algernon Joseph Rutherford Lamb, published 1938. Source: Internet Archive

In his book The Shire Horse: A History of the Breed, the Society, and the Men, Keith Chivers is positively lyrical in his praise of Erfyl Lady Grey. After describing the sensation of members of the Royal Family attending the 1923 National Shire Horse Show in London, Chivers becomes even more enthusiastic in his description of the Show the following year:

"To whom the 1924 Show belonged, there is no doubt whatever. It was as if one were to go to a beauty contest and, without warning, Helen of Troy walked in. Everyone gasped. Who was this creature? And from where had she spring, to unexpectedly? Her name was Erfyl Lady Grey, and she was nine years old. Sometimes a child who is not especially graceful, or a girl who is not obviously pretty, becomes in maturity a woman of consummate loveliness and charm. Lady Grey was one of those...."

Chivers later describes her as "the Venus of the breed" and "the greatest mare of all."

The Adelaide (Australia) Chronicle, August 15, 1925.

I don't think there's any way to know for sure, but if Arthur Gredington did have an inspiration for the 818 Shire, I think it's at least possible he found it, fully or in part, in Erfyl Lady Grey. 

Regardless of that lost bit of history, the 818 Shire Mare and Beswick's other figurines of heavy horses underscore the continued importance of the working farm animals in the UK in the early 20th century. It's wonderful that we can still appreciate them today.

Royal Worcester Shire "Manor Premier King," by Doris Lindner

Wouldn't you know it?

As soon as I decided I wanted to dramatically reduce the size of my model horse collection (again), I found a model horse on eBay that I had wanted for many, many years at a fair price. He's the Royal Worcester Shire Stallion "Manor Premier King," RW3759, one of a limited edition of 500 issued in 1963. 

My copy of the model is missing most of its mane flags/bobs (a few fell off during shipment and need to be glued back), but I don't mind. Most of my collection bears the damage of the decades, which endears them to me all the more. He'll fit right in.

British newspapers covered the release of the highly collectible horse.

The Daily Telegraph (London), 25 March 1964

Manor Premier King is another example of the intersection of real horse and model horse history. This is the real Manor Premier King, owned by Mr. R. A. S. Pleavin.

Manor Premier King, in The Listener magazine, 13 April 1961.
Found on the Internet Archive website. 

Foaled in 1954, he was one of the outstanding Shire show horses in the UK during the 1950s and early 1960s.

Source: All Breed Pedigree 

Manor Premier King really came into his own in April 1963 when he won the Shire Stallion Championship at the National Heavy Horse Show. The venerable Farmer & Stock-Breeder magazine covered his win in its 11 April 1963 edition. 

The book The Shire Horse: A History of the Bred, the society and the Men by Keith Chivers contains a picture of Manor Premier King in action.

Lindner captured that sense of action and style in her design.

Indeed, Doris Lindner told the Allentown, Pennsylvania Morning Call newspaper that Manor Premier King was her personal favorite of all her designs!

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Here's my post on the Royal Worcester Percheron "Saltmarsh Silver Crest" (sometimes spelled "Silvercrest") by Doris Lindner, and the real horse that inspired it:

https://modelhorsehistory.blogspot.com/2022/10/royal-worcester-percheron-saltmarsh.html

Here's my post on Doris Lindner's American horse designs:

https://modelhorsehistory.blogspot.com/2025/08/sharing-from-california-horse-history.html

"Zara" and "Zara," Ghezala and Ghazila

 

Most Hagen-Renaker collectors enjoy learning more about the Southern California pottery and the stories behind its creations. Some of the best resources are artist Maureen Love's original sketchbooks; she often (but not always) wrote the names of the horses on the covers. That is the case with the origin of the H-R B-655 "Large Zara" Arabian mare. She appears in the company's handwritten Mold Book in January 1957.

Photo by author. This "Large Zara" was restored after having suffered much damage and being rescued from a living estate sale in Southern California.

Source: Hagen-Renaker Online Museum

Maureen noted the real horse's name, Ghezala, on the cover of the sketchbook. Photos of the real Arabian mare GHEZALA AHR #4699 (chestnut mare 1948, Abu Farwa x Ghazna) show the strong resemblance between the horse and the Hagen-Renaker figurine.

Ghezala lived in Southern California with her owner, Leland Mekeel, and his family. 

To find other H-R origin stories, though, we sometimes have to step outside the model horse hobby itself.

This is the case with the backstory of the H-R B-708 "Small Zara" Arabian mare. She appears in the Mold Book in March 1959. Arabian horse authority Carol Woodbridge Mulder told me that the small "Zara" design was based on the 1952 gray Arabian mare GHAZILA 7486 (gray mare 1952, Abu Raseyn x Fahama). Carol was there when Maureen Love visited Ghazila with her owner, Grace Dashiell. (I'm not certain of the year.)

The earliest photo I found of her was as a two-year-old in the March 1954 issue of Western Horseman magazine. 

The young horse in the photo above doesn't look much like the H-R 6" "Zara" mold.

Photo by author

But this one, below, certainly does!

Grace Dashiell took out a full-page ad in the May 1967 issue of Arabian Horse News with this image of Ghazila.

After Maureen passed away, her heirs sold many pieces of her pastel sketches and other art on eBay. Several collectors saved the eBay images for reference. This one appears to show a younger gray Arabian mare with a lovely head.

Source: eBay auction listing

I wonder if this is one of Maureen's sketches of Ghazila? Since Maureen did not note her name, we may never know for sure. But I think it's at least possible.  Either way, the "Small Zara" mold is a favorite among H-R collectors.

Photo by author

 

Right Model Horse, Wrong Spelling: Hagen-Renaker B-704 "Lippet" and the Real Morgan stallion Lippitt Morman

Readers of this blog have probably guessed that Lippitt Morman is one of my very favorite real horses from history.

That's partly because he was the inspiration for the first Hagen-Renaker model horse figurine I ever knew about: the Hagen-Renaker "Lippet" Morgan stallion. 

The real Lippitt Morman was a chestnut Morgan stallion foaled in 1939, bred by the legendary Robert Lippitt Knight. The Family Search website (link below) tells us that name "Lippitt" was the registered prefix of Robert Lippitt Knight, of Providence, Rhode Island. Knight owned the Green Mountain Stock Farm in Randolph, Vermont, not far from the farm where Justin Morgan lived. Knight was a major breeder of "old type Morgans" from 1927 until 1962.

 The stallion's name was a combination of the names of his sire, Mansfield, and his dam, Lippitt Kate Moro.  Knight sold him to a Canadian, W.A. LeBoeuf, in 1943, and in 1946 they became famous for winning the Hundred Mile Trail Ride in Vermont. 

LeBoeuf sold Lippitt Morman to California Morgan breeder Roland Hill in 1947, and shortly thereafter Hill sold the chestnut stallion to his friend, horse rancher Merle Little, who lived not far from Hagen-Renaker and was a friend of the Renaker family, and of artist Maureen Love. 

At Little's El Rancho Poco, near what is now the intersection of the 210 Freeway and Mountain Avenue in Monrovia, California, Lippitt Morman was a multi-champion show horse, parade horse (in the Tournament of Roses and other Southern California events), and sire.   

Artist Maureen Love made many visits to El Rancho Poco during the 1950s, carrying her art supplies and sitting in the pasture sketching the horses. Several of the horses there inspired her designs of horse figurines for Hagen-Renaker.

The Hagen-Renaker "Lippet" was first issued in Spring 1959 through Spring 1974 in matte chestnut and matte palomino, then again from Fall 1983 to Spring 1986 in matte and gloss dark bay/brown.  

Given how famous the name "Lippitt" was in Morgan horse circles, I had long wondered why the Hagen-Renaker factory issued the figurine with a sticker spelling his name "Lippet" ! 

I'd always figured someone at the H-R factory wasn't familiar with Morgan horse names and spelled "Lippitt" incorrectly.

But since I inherited Merle Little's papers and photographs, I've come to the conclusion that the spelling error was due, at least in part, to the fact that spelling was not Merle's best subject in school. 

Merle saved the sales agreement letter he received when he bought Lippitt Morman from Roland Hills, and he misspelled his own horse's name on the envelope. 

It is also possible that, because Robert Lippitt Knight had registered the name "Lippitt," the folks at Hagen-Renaker erred on the side of caution and used the misspelled sticker name for their amazing Morgan stallion figurine. 

Lippitt Morman died at El Rancho Poco on October 10, 1962, but he lives on through Maureen Love's art. And regardless of how the factory's name spelling came about, the Hagen-Renaker Morgan stallion "Lippet" has long been a favorite of model horse collectors.

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More on Lippitt Morman and Merle Little:

https://californiahorsehistory.blogspot.com/2025/06/the-last-ranch-in-monrovia-horseman.html

https://modelhorsehistory.blogspot.com/2018/05/happy-birthday-lippitt-morman.html

Here's the Family Search bio of Robert Lippitt Knight: 

https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/L7QX-BSJ/robert-lippitt-knight-sr-1883-1962