Irish Draught

The Irish Draught first appears in the record in the late 1700s. Its ancestry probably runs back through the extinct Irish Hobbie ponies, themselves from small horses the Celts brought to Ireland around 500 BCE, crossed later with Norman horses and then with Connemaras, Spanish stock, Thoroughbreds and possibly Clydesdales.

It started as a landrace: one horse expected to work the fields, pull the wagon, carry someone out fox hunting, and look respectable ridden into town.

There is a specific reason it is built the way it is. The heavy draft breeds of the day did badly in Ireland, where wet, rough ground full of burrs and stickers caught in their heavy leg feather. What was needed was a lighter horse with the same strength, and that is what the Irish Draught became.

Ireland recognized it formally in 1901. The Ministry of Agriculture opened a studbook in 1917 and then lost it in a fire. The breed's popularity climbed sharply during the First World War.

Today it is mostly a riding and jumping horse, and it is used heavily to breed sport horses.