Crabbet Park Stud was first established in 1878 after Lord and Lady Anne Blunt returned to England from the Middle East with some fine Arabian horses with which to start a breeding program. Lady Anne, the daughter of the poet Lord Byron, was a highly respected horsewoman and had a deep love of horses since early childhood. Her husband, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt was well versed in Middle Eastern politics. While on one of their trips to the Middle East, Lady Anne fell in love with the beautiful majestic Arabian horses. She began a crusade to save the dwindling population of magnificent equines, and her passion fueled her to import and preserve the purest bloodlines as the Bedouins had done for hundreds of years. Traveling far into the Nejd desert, they sought the most prized horses of the Bedouin tribes. For 93 years, Crabbet Park Stud produced what became the foundation of other great breeding programs throughout the world. The last of the horses were sold in 1972 when the building of a road that would split the park was planned.
The Bedouins practiced and were obsessed with tracking the ancestry of their horses to ensure that the horses were of “asil” (pure) blood. Lady Blunt embraced their philosophies and was obsessed with creating animals whose ancestry was unquestionably pure.
The Blunts purchased a 37 acre park near Cairo Egypt in 1890. There they founded the SheykhObeyd stud. The breeding program contained the last remnants of the famous Egyptian breeding program of Ali Pasha Sherif. Lady Blunt took up permanent residence there in 1906, and lived there until she passed in 1917.
Messaoud, an Ali Pasha Sherif stallion was first imported to England in 1891. He was the perfect example of an Arabian horse, with outstanding conformation, good bone, a bright red chestnut color and four white stockings. He was highly influential throughout the world as a breeding stallion. His name can be found on thousands of pedigrees. He was later sold to the Russians in 1903, and he passed away during the Russian Revolution.
Lady Anne Blunt mentions in one of her diaries that her daughter’s first riding horse was a mare named Basilisk. Although the Blunts did not prefer grey horses because the military often purchased them as remounts, and grey horses were considered easy targets, their daughter was fond of them. Lady Wentworth took over Crabbet Park Stud and bought back many of the horses that her father had sold. Her desire was to revive some of the bloodlines that had died out. She had a keen eye and could recognize the potential of young foals from her experience of watching them grow up through the years.
In 1909 a grey Arabian stallion from the Antoniny Stud in Poland caught Lady Wentworth’s fancy. She quickly assessed his true potential and purchased him for her breeding program quietly and quickly. His name was Skowronek, and he became one of the most important and influential stallions at Crabbet Park Stud. He died at the ripe old age of 22.
After Lady Wentworth passed, she left the Crabbet Stud to the son of her stallion manager, Cecil Covey. He allowed the stallions to stand to the public, which imprinted the Arabian horse as a breed even more.
Crabbet bloodlines are predominant especially in the performance arenas. They excel at, and dominate the Tevis Cup, and the Quilty Hundred Mile Endurance Ride in Australia as well as many other types of performance classes. They are known for being conformationally correct, elegant, with strong bone, willing temperaments, and exceedingly athletic.
In technical terms, a Crabbet Arabian is a horse that traces in all lines of its pedigree to Arabians owned or bred by the Crabbet Park Stud, whether under the management of Lady and Lord Blunt, Lady Wentworth, or Cecil Covey.
Crabbet Arabian bloodlines show off their virtues especially well in saddle competition and in endurance riding. The Tevis Cup in the United States and the Quilty Hundred Mile Endurance Ride in Australia are dominated by Crabbet Arabians. They excel at the highest levels of performance competition due to their strong bones, excellent conformation, graceful movement, good temperament and outstanding performance ability, which are the recognized virtues of Crabbet Arabian horses.
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