The Tack Room

Polo, horse-racing, show jumping, endurance riding, ploughing, pit ponies, mounted police, carriage driving: all these different activities require different tack. Paula Sells shows how the tack used in 27 different disciplines has become specialised for each. She describes the tack rooms and their contents, conversations with the owners and the history, current status and challenges of each discipline. Each tack room has been selected for its importance in the discipline it represents: Badminton House (Duke of Beaufort’s Hunt); the Household Cavalry; the dressage, eventing and racing tack rooms of Carl Hester, Mary King and Andrew Balding. Tack rooms are treasure houses of traditional and innovative modern craftsmanship. The wide range of tack they hold reflects its evolution through our social history and the changing partnerships with horses in modern culture. AUTHOR: Paula Sells learnt to ride on Welsh Mountain ponies by rounding up sheep in North Wales. A keen huntswoman she represented Cheshire in a Pony Club eventing team which won at the Burghley National Championships. In 1998, after a career in tropical medicine, Paula became a member of the British Horse Loggers and works Shire-cross heavy horses. She worked for Riding for the Disabled and is now breeding flat racing thoroughbreds. 240 colour photographs and illustrations

Author Biography

Dr Paula Sells learnt to ride on Welsh Mountain ponies by rounding up sheep in north Wales. She hunted with the Flint & Denbigh, Cheshire Forest and Cheshire Hunts. She has evented at Burghley.

In 1998, after a career in tropical medicine, Paula became a member of the British Horse Loggers and worked Shire cross heavy horses in Wales and Cheshire. She visited Slovakia on a Leonardo da Vinci Scholarship in forestry and continues her work with agricultural students and schoolchildren.

Work with Riding for the Disabled led to long-distance trekking in Scotland and together with her family, Paula is now breeding thoroughbreds that are racing successfully on the flat.

The gift of a huge leather headcollar, stamped GWR and once worn by a Shire horse used for shunting carriages on the Great Western Railway, sparked an interest in the craft and history of harness and saddlery which has developed into the material for this book.