| The Oldest Indigenous Horse Breed of England
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The majestic Cleveland Bay Horse, one of the world's most important foundation horse breeds, is now critically rare, with numbers of only approximately 500 world-wide.
The Cleveland Bay is considered the oldest indigenous horse breed of England, originating from Cleveland (pictured below) and dating back to the Middle Ages. Cleveland, an area now part of the counties of North Yorkshire and Durham, is an area ranked for centuries as one of the leading horse-breeding areas of the world. Out of the beautiful countryside of Cleveland came both the Thoroughbred and the noble Cleveland Bay.
View from the Blue Bank looking out towards Ugglebarnby Moor - the Cleveland area.
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Versatile, Fundamentally Sound, Long-Lived,
And Economical to Keep
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The Cleveland Bay is fundamentally sound, economical to keep, hardy and long-lived. They have a long, straight back with powerful shoulders, chest and hind quarters. Their color is exclusively bay. The long straight back and muscular shoulders gracefully contour into a stately-arched neck and distinguished convex profiled head, sometimes termed as ram-like or hawk-like. Their height is 16-16.2 hands. The overall appearance is one of calm, intelligence, power and beauty.
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| Sure-footed, Loyal, and Pleasant To Ride
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The Cleveland Bay is considered in England to be the best general utility horse and the best foundation for hunter breeding; a very versatile utility breed famed as an excellent agricultural horse and a stately coach horse. However, it is also very pleasant to ride, easily meeting an average rider's needs. It is sure-footed, calm, intelligent, highly successful in jumping, eventing, dressage, is a very loyal horse of trustworthy temperament, and can be safely ridden by teenagers and their parents.
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| England's Premier Coach Horse
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Especially powerful through its neck and shoulders, the stately Cleveland Bay was unsurpassed as a coach horse through the reign of King George II. The Yorkshire Coach Horse Society was formed in 1886, sparked by the Cleveland Bay Society's divisive one-vote majority decision to exclude the famed Yorkshire Coach Horse, Candidate, from the Cleveland Bay Society. In 1938, with the gradual decline in world-demand for the Coach Horse, the Yorkshire Coach Horse Society and Cleveland Bay Horse Society joined hands as one, the Cleveland Bay Society. The societies thus consolidated their foundations into one superb mother registry for the breed, forever embracing the full heritage and tradition of England's noble Cleveland Bay.
The Cleveland Bay Horse Society's stewardsip is remarkable, maintaining a closed registry, a registry not based upon performance and rejecting any infusion of Thoroughbred blood. Cleveland Bay breeders overwhelmingly champion the Society's novel adaptation of the endangered species SPARKS (Single Population Analysis and Record Keeping System) computerized database system. The Society is able now to track pure-bred populations world-wide, minimize in-breeding, and better safeguard the invaluable purity of this ancient breed for generations to come.
Buckingham Palace Carriage.
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| Bravely Serving England - World Wars I and II
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The valiant Cleveland Bay also fought and died along side of England's finest soldiers, bravely serving England as the favored gun carriage horse on the battlefields of World Wars I and II. Untold numbers of Cleveland Bays were among the 1.5 million horses that died in the World Wars. At one point, only five studs remained, and to forestall extinction, the Queen of England intervened to rebuild the regal breed after the difficult decade following WWII. To this day, the Queen of England strongly supports the breed, and chairs The Cleveland Bay Horse Society.
(Pictured above is Bantry Bere (UK))
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| A Foundation Breed Like None Other
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Used for centuries world-wide to improve the native breeds of other countries, the Clydesdale, Gelderlander, Oldenburg, Holstein, Hanoverian, Russian Vladimir and Danish Schienswig all have Cleveland blood in their ancestry. The Cleveland Bay was also a foundation breed in the horse breeding program of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the late 1800's. Today the Cleveland Bay is a popular cross with the Thoroughbred, producing hunters, jumping and sporting horses of stunning beauty and performance.
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| Heritage and Tradition Are The Cleveland Bay
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