Dartmoor

The Dartmoor is one of England's five native ponies and comes from the moor it is named after, in the southwest. Pony remains there go back to 1500 BCE. A Dartmoor Pony appears in the will of Bishop Aelfwold of Crediton in 1012, and medieval manor records show them being branded and earmarked.

From the 1100s to the 1400s they were ridden, worked on farms, and used to pull skips in the coal and tin mines. When they were not needed they were turned out on the moor, which is where the breed really came from: generations of selection by rough ground and thin grazing rather than by anyone's plan.

They nearly went in the first half of the 1900s. Machines removed the work, and the purebreds that were left got crossed to make polo ponies and sport horses. The Dartmoor Pony Society formed in 1924, and numbers only started moving after the Second World War.

They are consistent in type, make good children's ponies, and are used now for grazing down invasive plants. The society is working to put purebred free-roaming herds back on the moor in place of the mixed-breed ponies there.