Crabbet Arabian Stud
The Blunts' Arabian journeys are described in Lady Anne's books Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates and A Pilgrimage to Nejd, based on her journals, though heavily edited by Wilfrid.
[1] As important to Crabbet as the desert Arabians were, the collection of Egyptian leader Abbas Pasha proved an equally valuable source.
This Governor of Egypt acquired horses from Arabia and Syria; his stock formed the foundation for the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif.
"[2] As he aged, Ali Pasha Sherif's health failed and he encountered financial and political problems, leading to the ruin of his stud.
Horses in Egypt were cared for by inattentive grooms and alcoholic managers, left tethered in the hot sun without shade or water, and many died.
Further, Wilfrid Blunt had no experience of horse breeding and believed that Arabians should live in "desert conditions" - that is, with little food or shelter provided.
[4] Bitter and anxious to pay off his creditors, Wilfrid sold 37 horses, exporting several to W.R. Brown's Maynesboro stud in the United States.
In turn, Judith and her children forcibly took her favorite mare, Riyala, from Wilfrid's stable, and purchased back many horses from their new owners.
[4] In 1921, the court declared that Wilfrid's seizure of horses was illegal, and that even the deed of partition was invalid, having been signed by Lady Anne "under duress".
They were extremely wealthy women from an Anglo-Indian merchant family,[6] and on settling in England had decided to turn their home at Hanstead Park into an Arabian stud farm.
Lady Wentworth rejected Wilfred's "desert conditions" theory as well as a prevailing conviction that Arabians were naturally the size of large ponies (that is, under 14.2 hands (58 inches, 147 cm)).
She first proved that Arabians could produce taller horses from the progeny of Rijm, a grandson of Rodania, who reached 16.1 hands (65 inches, 165 cm).
The English painter Walter Winans bought Skowronek from Count Josef Potocki's Antoniny Stud in Poland, where he had been foaled in 1909.
[9] While Count Potocki apparently found Skowronek unimpressive as a colt, having sold him to Winans for 150 pounds, the gray became a spectacular stallion and was named "Horse of the Century".
Lady Wentworth later turned down an offer of $250,000 from the Tersk Stud, and bragged that she once received a cable "from the Antipodes" addressed to "Skowronek, England."
The outcross of the Crabbet stock with Skowronek was extremely successful, and the resulting animals not only sold throughout England but were exported to Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Egypt, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Russia and the USA.
Lady Wentworth herself was satisfied that Skowronek was a purebred (or asil) Arabian, tracing his pedigree and strain to several reliable desert sources.
However, research of Jaskoulka's pedigree shows that her sire Rymnik and her dam Epopeja (also spelled Epopeia or Epopya) both traced to Abbas Pasha horses.
To reduce the size of the herd, she made major sales in 1936 to the Tersk Stud of the Soviet Union, selling 25 horses, including the beautiful Skowronek son Naseem.
[4] After the war, she purchased the stallions Raktha and Oran, and produced other significant breeding stock including Sharima, Silver Fire, Indian Gold, and Nisreen.
[11] For twelve years the stud ran smoothly under Covey, with twenty to thirty horses plus visiting mares; for the first time, the Crabbet sires were open to outside breeders.
In early 1970, however, Covey learned that the government planned to build the M23 motorway connecting South London with Gatwick Airport and Brighton.
The motorway eventually bisected Crabbet Park, and, having lost most of the horse pastures to development, in 1972 Covey reluctantly sold off the last of the Stud.
Most of the roads have equestrianism names, or Wentworth, Blunt and albeit much more recently relevant Lytton and similar reflecting the centuries-old family that used to have ownership of the land.
Thus, the modern Arabian of Crabbet ancestry can be seen in the backyard of the single horse owner, on rugged wilderness terrain, or at the highest levels of national performance competition.
