Hackney
The Hackney Horse, and Hackney pony, are arguably the world's most impressive harness horses. The Hackney has a distinctive conformation, and its brilliant, unique action is described in the breed description as "effortless in the extreme", "electrical and snappy at its zenith", and giving "the impression of a mystic, indescribably deliberate, instantaneous poise". In part this extravagant movement can be taught and refined by skilful training, but much of it is inherited and derives from years of careful selective breeding and the foundation of trotting blood, from which it originated in the 18th century.
ORIGINS
The Hackney Horse developed from the great trotting horses of the 18th and 19th centuries, which were traditional to England and left their mark upon many breeds in Europe and some notable ones in the US. However, the word Hackney probably comes from the French word haquenee and "hackney" (without the capital letter) was used to mean a riding horse from the Middle Ages onwards.
There were two regional types of trotting horses in the UK, known as Trotters or Roadsters: the Norfolk and the Yorkshire. These shared a common ancestor, Original Shales, who was born in 1755 out of a "hackney", or riding, mare by Blaze. Blaze, who is considered as "the principal figure in the first chapter in the Genesis of Great Trotters", was the son of Flying Childers, the first great racehorse. He, in turn, was a great grandson of the Darley Arabian, one of the three founding sires of the Thoroughbred. Blaze is also connected with the American Standardbred through his great-great-grandson Messenger. However, it was Blaze's son Shales, and Shales' two sons, Driver and Scot Shales, together with another horse, Marshland, who had Scot Shales on both sides of his pedigree, that were the prime influences on the Norfolk Trotter.
It was their progeny, when crossed with Yorkshire mares, that produced the northern trotting strain. Today, the regional variations are long gone, and the best characteristics are brought together in the elegance of the modern Hackney. The Hackney Horse Society was founded in Norwich, England, in 1883. The records of these early trotting horses, who were trotted and raced under saddle long before they were used between the shafts, are very impressive, and explain something of the high courage and stamina of their modern descendants.
Bellfounder, with a direct line to the racehorse, Eclipse, trotted 3 km (2 miles) in six minutes, and 14 km (9 miles) in 30 minutes. His dam Velocity had trotted 25 km (16 miles) in an hour. The mare Phenomena, who was by the Norfolk Phenomenon, was barely 1.42 m (14 hh), but she trotted 27 km (17 miles) in 53 minutes, and in 1832 Nonpareil was driven 160 km (100 miles) in 9 hours 56 minutes and 57 seconds.
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