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This story was submitted to the People’s War site by Janine John of the Cumbria volunteers on behalf of Margaret Harper and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site’s terms and conditions.

Margaret writes: ‘In the early 1900s, Joseph Wood of Cooper House, Selside, purchased a young white horse named Queenie from a Circus Company. Queenie was out of favour as she would not perform all the equine circus acts. Joseph took her home and used her to pull his stylish ‘trap’, conveying him around the countryside. They became well known, and she often returned him asleep to the family in the trap, sometimes imbibed on the local home-made wine. Joseph died in 1940, and Queenie went to his youngest son John at Hill Fold, Burneside, near Kendal. In 1942 when Queenie was thought to be over 35 years of age, the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries refused her a food allowance as she was ‘not a working horse’, so she was sadly put to sleep. The above photograph, taken by a local photographer shows John, his daughter Margaret, and evacuee Maureen, having a last ride with Queenie.’

On remembering the story of Queenie Margaret tells me: ‘My father said that on a summer’s evening they used to leave the box. The farm was set up in a big square and big wooden doors so the farm was cut off from the house and you opened the big doors to go into the farmyard. He said that if you went in sometimes you’d see her doing some of her tricks - standing on her hind legs having a little practice. Remembering what she used to do, and probably remembering what she ought to have done.’

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