Community Centre & Art Gallery
Exhibit 'A' Gallery
at The Old Courthouse
Talks at The Old Courthouse
Friday 2nd August
“Border Families: The Galloway, the Fell, and the Dales”
Dr Miriam Bibby
&
“The Old Breed of Pony”: Fell Ponies and the Fell Pony Society
Sue Millard
Starts 7pm
Doors Open – 6.30pm
Money raised will go towards the Fell Pony Society and The Old Courthouse
“Border Families: The Galloway, the Fell, and the Dales”
Dr Miriam A Bibby FSA Scot FRHistS
It is widely believed that Fell and Dales ponies are descendants of the famous horses from Galloway known to the English as Galloway Nags, and possibly their closest representatives in the modern world. In this talk, Dr Miriam A Bibby will present some of the available evidence for this belief, and outline similarities and differences between the historic Galloway and the modern Fell and Dales ponies. Like the people who raised them, the Galloway, the Fell, and the Dales ponies have shown great qualities of endurance and adaptability over the centuries, and their story reflects their importance not only to the north of England and Scotland, but also globally.
Miriam is an academic, writer, editor, and broadcaster. Her work has been published in many journals and magazines. She is the author of Invisible Ancestor: the Galloway Nag and its Legacy. This publication was inspired by her PhD topic the Galloway Horse, or Galloway Nag, which she often refers to as “the most influential horse that few have ever heard about.” Miriam was formerly a tutor and course developer for the University of Manchester’s networked learning course in Egyptology, gaining her MPhil on the topic of the horse in ancient Egypt while working there. She was curator of the Clan Armstrong Trust Museum in Langholm and has worked at Gilnockie Tower, as well as on several heritage projects in southwest Scotland. She is currently co-editor-in-chief of Cheiron: the International Journal of Equine and Equestrian History. She also has very happy memories of her time working as a pack horse woman at Beamish Museum with a range of ponies, including Fells and Fell crosses. She currently has three Fell ponies and a black and white cob.
“The Old Breed of Pony”: Fell Ponies and the Fell Pony Society
Sue Millard
Sue was born in Cheshire, and moved to Cumbria in 1975 where she has worked as a pony-trek leader, a barmaid, designer of embroidery canvases, maker of competition driving harness, and farmer. With a postgraduate degree in Multimedia Computing via UCLan (Newton Rigg College) she taught at the newly formed University of Cumbria, then after early retirement became a website manager, editor and writer.
She has served on the Council of the Fell Pony Society since 2005 and quickly became its Webmaster and Magazine Editor.
In addition to writing and speaking the scripts for the FPS Display Team’s performances, Sue writes fiction, poetry and non-fiction and lives with her husband in “a very small hamlet at the end of the world”.
