Peggy passed away on Saturday 15 February 2025, aged 93, after a long and happy life, well-lived and loved by so many. Peggy was not one for the small committee room – she was a doer and loved to talk, and put this to good use promoting the New Forest pony and her beloved New Forest. She was always active in Forest affairs and wouldn’t have missed many Verderers Courts in the last 50 years, nor public meetings of the Commoners Defence Association, Breed Society or New Forest Association.
Peggy was a meticulous record keeper and for over 20 years she looked after the Breed Show cup records, and always had time for a chat with the lucky cup winners as the signing of the paperwork was completed. She was active from beginning to end of the New Forest Pony Publicity Group which did such tireless and sterling work promoting the breed all over the country in those days just prior to the social media age. For about thirty years she ran the CDA stand at the New Forest Show, always talking ponies, commoning, New Forest. Single-handedly, with dogged determination but also foresight, she built up the largest collection of photographs of the New Forest stallions from the late 1970s onwards, each one with detailed breeding recorded on the back. Every Beaulieu Road Sale she was there, noting down the prices in the catalogue, which was then neatly stored, building up to a collection of about 60 years’ worth of annotated catalogues. For years she attended every drift, always chatting to every passer-by, explaining what was going on, talking ponies, commoning, New Forest. She drove a Reliant Robin, and on several occasions ‘the boys’ had to pick it up and get her out of a muddy spot!
Her contribution was recognised with Honorary Life Membership of both the CDA and Breed Society, and in 2012 she was President of the Breed Society which she regarded as a huge privilege in her own unassuming way and quietly enjoyed the unexpected honour of greeting the Queen on her Diamond Jubilee visit to the breed stand at the New Forest Show.
Peggy, with her late husband Brian, bred the Sprattsdown herd, with the anchor-B brand on the Forest-run ponies. Their aim was to produce a useful, all-round riding pony with the temperament and performance capability to take the rider to wherever they wanted to go. The herd was 75 years old in 2024, and is unusual in that it is one of the few to be descended from a single mare, so that all Sprattsdown ponies today are related and descend from Gypsy Princess NPS9743, born in 1949, a gift to Brian from his mother. 205 ponies have borne the Sprattsdown prefix. Peggy loved weaning the foals and teaching them their manners and, needless to say, kept immaculate records and photos and she so enjoyed keeping in touch with their owners and following their progress. Jane Murray
