The Society warmly congratulates Dionis Macnair on the award of MBE in the Birthday Honours List 2010, for services to the New Forest.

Dionis joined the Society in 1946, the same year that she acquired her first New Forest pony, a two-year-old filly Bramble – she still has her descendants.  Dionis gained her BHSAI in Sussex and returned to Burley, joining Mrs Keymer’s riding school, which she eventually took over.

She joined the Council in the late 1950s and when Mrs Parsons retired in 1966 she took over as Honorary Secretary.  As a Society judge she has travelled all over Europe and she is on both the mixed mountain and moorland and working hunter pony judging panels of the National Pony Society. She continues to run mares on the Forest, breeding the Beacon ponies.

Dionis has been an elected Verderer of the New Forest for over twenty years, and was the first woman to be elected to this ancient Court that governs affairs on the Crown Lands of the New Forest.

Following her retirement as Breed Society Secretary in 2003, she completed her book New Forest Ponies, recognised as the authority on the breed. Dionis is the Society’s representative on the British Horse Society’s Horse and Pony Breeds Committee and for many years has represented the mountain and moorland breed societies on the National Pony Society’s Council. She has been an active member of the New Forest Pony Publicity Group from its start and is a stalwart of village life in Burley where she has lived since childhood. She continues to serve as a Council member and her historical knowledge of the breed is second to none.

Congratulations, Dionis, on this richly deserved award.