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Fields at Dudfleet
Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, Monday, 24th November 2008
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THESE SMALL, STURDY, shaggy black ponies make the pastures between the river and railway at Dudfleet, Horbury, seem remote; I’d expect to see a little herd like this on Exmoor or in Iceland. The rough land around here was known as Horbury Shrogges in the medieval period and it gets a mention in the Second Shepherd’s Play in the Wakefield cycle of Mystery Plays as the sort of place you might lose some of your flock. There’s a heathy area in Sherwood Forest known as Clipstone Shrogges.
I guess that these black ponies would feel at home in the medieval Calder Valley.