The Stable Handbook 



and the saving of labour. In a small country house 

 we shall generally find two kinds of stable. First, 

 the builder's idea of a two-stall stable for what he 

 would call " a villa residence suitable to a retired 

 gentleman." Such stables generally have every fault 

 that a stable can have. Brick floors, with a drain 

 in the middle of the stall or loose box, is the worst 

 and most usual fault. Cheap mangers of varnished 

 wood and a hay rack half way up the wall. Then 

 they are dark and stuffy, the air space is deficient, 

 and yet, as the work is not too good, they are 

 draughty in the wrong place. The other kind, 

 and far better, is where the stables have been con- 

 structed out of cart stables or outhouses, and still 

 better is where we find simply outhouses — it 

 little matters how rough if they are sound and 

 weather proof. Out of such buildings we can 

 easily make our own stables. 



Let me give an instance of a set of stables I 

 devised for a friend. The house was an old farm- 

 house, and the stables, with the one exception of 

 a small pony box and a stall, were made out of a 

 series of outhouses which had been used for carts, 

 cows, and chickens. What we had to begin with 

 was four walls and a fair slate roof, and floors of 

 bricks or earth of various degrees of foulness and 

 disrepair. Now, the most important, indeed indis- 

 pensable, matter in a stable is a hard floor and one 

 that is easily kept clean. One difficulty was re- 

 moved by the fact that there was no inside drain 

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