Fell Pony

The Fell is the Dales pony's opposite number. Both worked the lead mines of the northern Pennines, the Dales on the eastern slopes and the Fell on the western, carrying ore down to the coast and coal back up, as much as 20 miles a day over rock. They take their name from the fells they survived on.

The early ancestry is obscure, as it is for most of the British hill breeds, running back to Celtic horses that reached the islands in antiquity.

Lead mining declined through the 1800s and the ponies moved onto the hill farms, where they did field work, transport, sheep herding and riding. Then engines arrived and took the rest of the work, and the breed fell to dangerously low numbers.

Leisure riding brought them back in the 1950s, and the last twenty years have seen a second revival as breeders in Europe and North America found uses for them. They compete in driving, dressage and endurance now, and do trail and ranch work.