A Stallion for Appleby

Drive 2 Survive has made a sculpture of a Gypsy cob Stallion for the town of the Appleby. If you would like to support the planning application to have this permanently erected on the banks of the River Eden, here's what you can do.

Working with expert planner Mark Simmonds and with support from Appleby Town Council, Bill Lloyd and Billy Welch and local district councillors and employees, we have identified a place next to the River Eden where we would like to erect the statue as a permanent reminder of the importance of the fair to Gypsy and Traveller culture.

While permission in principle to use the site has been given by its landowner Westmoreland and Furness District Council, it needs to have full planning permission in order to be permanently in place. We urgently need your support to get this planning permission in the by March 22nd. It takes just two minutes to leave a comment on the planning proposal here:

https://planningregister.westmorlandandfurness.gov.uk/Planning/Display/2025/0264/FPA

The application has been expertly put together pro bono (without charge) by Mark Simmonds who has also gathered photographic evidence of family histories of Appleby from his many Gypsy and Traveller clients. https://www.vardointelligentplanningservices.co.uk/client-family-photographs

The Stallion has been created by Drive 2 Survive co-chair Jake Bowers who has submitted the following artists statement with the application.

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Appleby Fair is a central event in the life and history of Appleby in Westmoreland for both local residents and the Gypsy and Traveller communities that make the pilgrimage to the annual horse fair every June. The fair has a long history. It was first held in 1775 as an event for sheep and cattle drovers and horse dealers to sell their stock.  By the 1900s it had evolved into the biggest Gypsy and Traveller fair in the world where horses are still traded, usually for cash. Over the course of fair week tens of thousands of Gypsies and Travellers and tourists come to Appleby to see the spectacle of Gypsy families trotting their horses from the fairground to the banks of the River Eden where they are washed before being returned to the hill.

But come to Appleby outside fair week and very little tangible evidence exists of the central importance of the fair to the town and it’s Gypsy and Traveller visitors. As a permanent fixture in the life of the town and the culture of Gypsies and Travellers, the Gypsy and Traveller community would like to donate a public sculpture to the town of Appleby to make this crucial part of the town’s intangible heritage more tangible and visible. 

To this end, I took a mobile forge to Appleby Fair in 2023 and 2024 and started the job of making a forged sculpture of the Appleby Stallion, it was completed and galvanised in the autumn of 2024. It is one of 12 sculptures the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has funded the Drive 2 Survive Community Interest Company to make.

Over the next three years these are to be installed throughout the British landscape to make Gypsy and Traveller culture and history visible, celebrated and tangible. In the 2024 Appleby Town Council was approached to discuss a suitable site for the Appleby Stallion and an area opposite the place where horses are taken into the river was identified and agreed upon. In January 2025 consent to install the statue on the area between the footpath and the River Eden was granted in principle by Westmoreland and Furness District Council.

This sculpture, made collaboratively by Gypsy and Traveller community members from across Britain, together with public sector workers from the Police and Fire Services in Cumbria, is intended to make the contribution of the Gypsy and Traveller to Appleby visible, permanent and celebrated.

It celebrates our history, culture and horses, and is intended as a thank you to the town for hosting an event that is like a spiritual pilgrimage for us. Each year most of us move on to return a year later, and we wish to leave a fitting memorial to the beauty and vibrancy of our culture behind in the spirit that we will always work together to celebrate and preserve a crucial part of Britain’s sustainable rural heritage.

We sincerely hope that the sculpture can be installed before the next fair in June 2025

Jake Bowers, 10th February 2025