Crabbet Arabian Stud
Crabbet Arabian Stud
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Crabbet Arabian Stud

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Crabbet Arabian Stud

The Crabbet Arabian Stud, also known as the Crabbet Park Stud, was an English horse breeding farm that ran from 1878 to 1972. Its founder owners, husband and wife team Wilfrid Scawen Blunt and Lady Anne Blunt, decided while travelling in the Middle East to import some of the best Arabian horses to England and breed them there. They maintained the Sheykh Obeyd estate near Cairo to facilitate this. Their daughter Judith Blunt-Lytton, 16th Baroness Wentworth carried on the stud until her death. The stud was sold up in 1971, but its bloodlines continue to influence the breed worldwide in the 21st century.

The Blunts' Arabian journeys are described in Lady Anne's books Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates and A Pilgrimage to Nejd, based on her journals, though heavily edited by Wilfrid. In the winter of 1877/1878 they left Aleppo for what is now Iraq and reached the camps of Faris, a prince of the Anazzah tribe; Ferhan and other Bedouin leaders. Wilfrid became the blood brother of Faris. On a subsequent trip in 1881 the couple reached the heart of the Najd in what is now Saudi Arabia.

Among the horses the Blunts acquired on these journeys were the bay filly Dajania, purchased on Christmas Day in 1877; a dark bay mare eventually named Queen of Sheba, purchased from the Sheykh of Gomussa and his cousin in the summer of 1878; and a chestnut mare named Rodania. All three have left many descendants. Through their connections among the tribes, the Blunts also heard of a celebrated grey stallion. They sent a trusted friend, Zeyd Saad el Muteyri, to buy him; the horse was named Azrek, and became an influential sire.

The Blunt family (and to include one generation prior, that of a female ancestor, the Gale family), of whom Wilfred was the primogeniture heir, inherited and enjoyed the manor and forests of Worth including Crabbet Park House they erected in Queen Anne Style, since the year 1698.

As important to Crabbet as the desert Arabians were, the collection of Egyptian leader Abbas Pasha proved an equally valuable source. This Governor of Egypt acquired horses from Arabia and Syria; his stock formed the foundation for the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif. The Blunts made their initial visit to Ali Pasha Sherif in 1880 and purchased the stallion Mesaoud, in 1889. Lady Anne wrote of the stallion: "He is four white legged and high up to the knee but surprisingly handsome."

As he aged, Ali Pasha Sherif's health failed and he encountered financial and political problems, leading to the ruin of his stud. In 1896 and 1897 Lady Anne inspected what she called the "sad remnants" before they were sold at auction, and was able to procure several of the best horses that remained. Some of these horses remained in Egypt, at a stud farm owned by the Blunts called Sheykh Obeyd. Thus, according to breed expert Rosemary Archer, some of today's horses of Crabbet breeding carry a higher proportion of Abbas Pasha blood than many present-day Egyptian Arabians.

Thanks to these purchases, Crabbet became a principal centre of Arabian horse breeding in England. However, there were many problems along the way. The Blunts spent much of their time travelling in Arabia and did not know what was going on in their absence. The pastures were ill-tended, the stables and paddocks not cleaned, stallions were shut up without exercise for weeks at a time. The Sheykh Obeyd stud fared little better while the Blunts were in England. Horses in Egypt were cared for by inattentive grooms and alcoholic managers, left tethered in the hot sun without shade or water, and many died. Further, Wilfrid Blunt had no experience of horse breeding and believed that Arabians should live in "desert conditions" - that is, with little food or shelter provided. Lady Anne disagreed, but she was not able to demonstrate the superiority of her methods of horse management until the Blunts separated in 1906.

In that year, Wilfrid's mistress, Dorothy Carleton, moved in with him, and the Blunts agreed to a formal separation. The Stud was divided. Lady Anne signed a deed of partition drawn up by Wilfrid. Under its terms, she kept Crabbet Park and half the horses, while he took Caxtons Farm, also known as Newbuildings, and the rest of the stock. Soon thereafter, Lady Anne retired to Sheykh Obeyd in Cairo, where she lived for most of the remainder of her life. Wilfrid frequently had to sell horses to pay his debts. Lady Wentworth wrote of her husband, "His tyranny and spirit of discord eventually alienated him from his family, from most of his friends, and from several countries...He had a theatrical tendency to thunder and lightning stage effects which verged on melodrama...and his temper was not improved by hashish and morphia..."

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