62 LIGHT HORSES: BREEDS AND MANAGIEMENT. 



except when for the avowed purpose of developing the Coach 

 Horse breed, such crossing was very little resorted to. 



In the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century and 

 in the earlier years of the present century, the whole of the 

 agricultural work in the Vale of Cleveland was practically 

 performed by Cleveland Bays. The surface of the country 

 presented a very different aspect to what it does now ; there 

 was a larger proportion of grass, and the Cleveland Bay was 

 powerful enough to do all the work of the farm. Indeed, I 

 should very much question if, in the heart of Cleveland, the 

 draught horse in anything approaching his modern type was 

 known at all until the present century was eight or ten years 

 old. With the wars which were the direct result of the French 

 Revolution, the value of wheat and other cereals rose to famine 

 prices, and when oats sold, as they did sell, at 6s. 6d. per 

 bushel, whilst wheat made as much as a guinea, it was not to 

 be wondered at that farmers and landowners equally were eager 

 to grow corn wherever corn could be grown, and that they 

 hastened to convert into tillage much of the good grass land in 

 the Vale of Cleveland. Nor were they content with turning 

 their pasture into tillage. Bleak and apparently inaccessible 

 places places more adapted for the growth of larches, or 

 even Scottish firs, than corn were broken up and sown with 

 wheat. Indeed, the memory of one of these rash enterprises 

 is preserved in the Ordnance map by its name of Bold Ven- 

 ture. A sweeping change like this, as a matter of course, 

 brought other changes in its track. Farmers who were resi- 

 dent in the neighbourhood of Stokesley used to take their corn 

 to Thirsk market, a distance of some twenty miles over not 

 the best of roads, and then they began to fancy that they 

 required a heavier and more powerful horse. The land which 

 had been converted into arable was also found to be a strong 

 clay, and on this account again the farmers thought that they 

 required a heavier breed of horses. So they crossed their 

 fine Cleveland mares with such cart horses as they could get, 

 with a result that was disastrous, and which indeed nearly 



