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.