I feel blessed to have walked many thousands of miles across the moors and fells of Northern England without serious incident yet cannot claim to have seen more than a handful of ponies during all my travels. When I did, it was merely a glimpse of them in the Lake District, on the western flanks of Helvellyn, close to the 2000ft contour. These were Fell ponies, typically appearing, as if by magic, on late spring mornings with bitterly cold winds and with snow still lying on the ground.
Freedom
With easier foraging to be had lower down, I cannot help wondering what had brought these animals so high – my best guess is that they enjoy the freedom to wander, well out of harm’s way. As fast as they appeared, suddenly, they would be gone!
Today, there are two separate breeds of these hardy northern ponies, the Dales, and the Fell, which at one time were indistinguishable in character and appearance – their usefulness to man, however, was never in doubt. Both were unbeatable as pack animals, crossing the Pennine Chain through counties with names like Cumberland and Westmorland (now Cumbria) the Yorkshire Moors and Dales, and the rolling hills of neighbouring Northumberland. My focus today is to find out something about them, especially their vital role within land-based industries in the past.
Hostile terrain
Between these far-flung places, there are still vast swathes of moor and mountain, steep-sided valleys to climb, peat bogs to dodge and raging rivers to ford. Here, in such hostile terrain, and in all kinds of weather, these tough little ponies proved their worth for millennia. In Roman times, when lead was first mined in remote areas of upper Swaledale, then later throughout the Industrial Revolution to the present day, these ponies continued to prove their worth. They were indispensable to trade.
Slate was an integral part of the geological landscape ofto the list of minerals being extracted throughout the north on a huge scale and it was these ponies that did much of the haulage work on the surface of collieries throughout the Durham coalfield.
