HUSTEADS RIDING SCHOOL

In the Beginning ....

Husteads Riding School started around 1971.   I have lived at Husteads Farm all my life.   My father was the true old-fashioned horse dealer and also restored horse carriages and built gypsy caravans. There was always a great variety of horses coming and going, so consequently this attracted local children, who lived around Saddleworth, to come and look at the horses.   Pony rides for a few pence were started, and with money saved it bought a few more ponies, and everything snowballed
from there.   In 1974 a pony called Beauty was given to the farm, and is still living here to this day.  
It was Beauty who everybody had their first lesson on, in those very early days.   Each year more
ponies were acquired, buildings erected, paddocks built and eventually a horse called Abigail
appeared.   She was a strawberry roan mare, from whom we bred three of the riding school’s
present complement of horses - Carmen, Zola and April.   Many other horses have been bred and
broken in for the riding school over the years, as the policy we have here is, that the horses are
better behaved for customers, and have not been spoiled by inexperienced people, if they have been
bred and trained at Husteads.