Livery stables don’t exist in farming communities - farmers have their own land and stabling. As for teaching - it’s not like being a doctor, anyone can teach a kid how to ride a pony if they have the skills.
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Lilian, and Christine after her, did take the trouble to learn how to do it well, though; Lilian for a year before she opened her own stables, Christine after she realised she would be taking over from Lilian. Shula too went on various courses in horse management and so on.
The Stables does now have horses at livery; Shula worries every time there is any difficulty that the owners will take them away.
– Except I don’t think she was worried about that happening when one of her horses got strangles; I was astonished by that. She seemed more worried, within ten days, about Loxfest, and apart from not knowing how to tell the owner of the horse never mentioned the matter of strangles again. (25th June 2014 and 3rd July 2014.)
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Nonsense. Things have changed since the days of Charles Dickens.
Go and argue it with the OED.
See meaning #2 here: Oxford Languages | The Home of Language Data
She may well have worked with Grace in the early 1950’s, but that might have been difficult to do in the mid 1960s. when one remembers that Grace died in 1955.
In 64/65-ish. Another one of Paul Johnson’s spectacular business failures, just had. To make some money quickly. Christine with Carol (who was at the time her best friend) providing financial backing set up a riding establishement. Christine was going to do all of the work, Carol was going to help with the admin and money.
Christine had a British Horse Society, Instructors certificate. Which meant getting the local authority licence under The Riding Establishments Act 1964 and the required insurance, was not a problem. (You can look up the above law on many .gov and other websites)
Yes it’s true that just about any hack who knows the front end of a horse from the back, can call themselves a riding instructor. Just try getting insurance to do that professionally.
Christine - at this time - didn’t take over the stables from, or indeed go to work for Lillian.
Lillian would have been 17-18 or thereabouts and somewhat precocious to have been running her own riding stables for many years.
BHSI is quite a hurdle. Do you have a reference to her qualifying for it?
How is a 1964 law relevant?
If I answer this, others on here will only find cause to challenge it, so it’s probably easier if you go and look at the law for yourself.
Then perhaps you’ll explain how you know that Christine had a high level instructor qualification?
S’magic, innit. Either that or it was something Sally Johnson arranged when Christine was in partnership (at the stables) with her in 56-57 ish.
Put it down to Ambridge fairies.
Who is Sally Johnson?
Paul Johnson’s sister and eventually Christine’s sister-in law.
Engaged in a specified activity as one’s main paid occupation rather than as an amateur. ‘a professional boxer’ – and being a very part time barmaid was in no way Lilian’s main occupation. I repeat, Lilian was not a professional barmaid at any time.
Christine and Grace were partners in Grace’s stables until Grace died, as I said. She remained a showjumping rider, even after her marriage with Paul Johnson in December 1956, a year after Grace’s death; she did well at Richmond and in the Horse of the Year show, then Paul said that he was damned if he was going to come second to a horse and she gave it up and became tied up in his businesses and being a 1950s housewife. In 1960 she left Ambridge with him for a year when he found work in Newmarket. On their return they adopted a child, Peter, in 1965, and Christine was busy being domestic and running the playgroup and the WI and such. Is there anything anywhere to tell me a] that she started a stables on her own during the 1960s in spite of her husband’s objection and b] that Carol Tregorran financed it? Was this yet another stables, not the one she’d already had with Grace and not the one Phil later bought for her from Lilian after she had been working for Lilian in it? Where was it? What premises? Was she in any way upset about a rival establishment being set up in the same village?
Lilian started her stables at the beginning of 1967, having spent the year at Felpersham Riding Academy learning how to do it. Christine certainly worked for Lilian from some time in 1970 or 1971, and she certainly worked with Trina Muir in Lilian’s stables after Lilian left Ambridge in 1975; Lilian had certainly been running The Stables riding school as their owner continuously since 1967 – which time included her marriage to Nick in 1969, her widowhood after his death in 1970, and then until her pregnancy with her son James Bellamy in 1972-3, during which her husband Ralph Bellamy forbade her to ride and she turned over the management of her stables to Trina Muir. Christine became the owner of Lilian’s stables (which have always been on the present site) in 1977. If she had already owned a stables in either 1967 or 1975, why would she have been working for Lilian at the stables Lilian started with Aunt Laura’s help in the grounds of Barratt’s Farm, renamed Onemonoma by Laura, renamed The Stables when Lilian bought the house from Aunt Laura in 1973?
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