Museum of the Horse
We are the only European country that does not have an official Museum of the Horse. Such an oversight from a country of horse lovers needs to be corrected. We have extensive material here that requires archiving and valuable artefacts that should be valued that show our social, working and artistic history. This campaign has been launched to raise awareness of this oversight and to establish a Museum of the Horse.
The museum of the horse website is a virtual museum dedicated to the horse in all its inspiration, mythology, application, suffrage and history. The collection it displays is for the major part, privately owned, with the intention that one day the collection can be handed over to a physical Museum of the Horse, UK.
We are building a better future for horses out of the past.
A tribute to Monty Roberts
By Caroline Baldock
I first met Monty Roberts thanks to an actor friend, Enn Reitell. In 1989 the racing world was stirred and then shaken by the emergence from California of a man who clamed he could saddle, bridle and put a rider on a horse in 27 minutes with no ill effects. Enn Reitell called me and said he was going up to Aston Park Stud as Monty was starting some horses there. I was in. I also took my hat and wore my usual gear of Jodhpurs and boots. (being an ex–jockey). When we arrived Monty was short of a rider, the girl who was going to get on the horses had hurt her ankle.
“Anyone ride round here?”
“I can a bit.” I admitted. Enn and I met both riding work for Reg Akehurst in Epsom.
I rode the horses that day and was impressed with his methodology and technique and also understood that he was communicating through body language, which the horse was responding to.
I asked Monty in the pub at lunch if one should ever ht a horse.
“No.” was his emphatic answer.
Suddenly I knew I had found a humane spirit who understood horses.
We dined at Aston Park House that evening in great splendour, as befitted a man who was about to rise to the very top of the horse world and be patronised by our very own Queen Elisabeth ll.
I followed him wherever he was in England and he asked me to write a piece for him describing Join–Up™. The rest is history. I visited Flag Is Up Farms in 1994 and read the manuscript of the book that became a best seller called, ‘The Man Who Listens to Horses’.
In 1997 I was contacted by Pat and asked if I could come out and work for Monty on three books. I worked with Monty and Pat for about 3 years, and have remained a close friend ever since.
Not only are they both incredibly expert horse riders, taking prize after prize, but once you spent time looking into the message that Monty was going to shower the world with, it was definitely clean up time. He believed in himself and in his life–given work that was to take violence out of horse handling and replace it with a natural communication that horses could understand, a communication based on body language.
Monty battled critics, disbelievers, family feuds, and public outcries of ‘Fake’ and ‘this man must have a trick.’
There was no tricks just plain simple communication. Monty never gave up not even to the bitter end. He has left us a whole university of intelligence about horses. He has rescued, saved and retrained so many horses they are uncountable, including the great Lomitus and the lovely Shy Boy, who died last year.
He inderfatigueably travelled the world with his concepts. Europe, Japan, Australia, and finally South America, with the Queen standing firmly behind him and encouraging him. He kept up a pace that would exhaust most people. With his beautiful wife Pat, who was his rock, his critic and soul mate always standing there ready to put out the constant fireworks which generally showered him. He was a lucky man. Behind every great man there is a great woman and Monty knew that. They were a team.
Now the team is broken and Monty has gone, but his work will survive and continue to influence the world of the horse, and the world of human communication. This is not an end it is simply a peaceful interlude in which we can, all of us who have had him touch our lives remember what he said and what he means to us all. Flag Is Up Farms remains his centre. His eldest daughter Debbie continues to run the school and she and Pat are supporting him in every way possible.
Caroline Baldock 2026
