Island Life Magazine Ltd October/November 2008 | Page 84

‘And don’t
call me sir!’

life

EQUESTRIAN - Sponsored by Brickfields and Froghill Tack

Roz Whistance meets a champion pony breeder
who began life on a council estate

Quietly, ever so quietly,
the Longstone Stud has
been making waves in the
pony world. Pick up the
stud book and you will
find this relative newcomer
has from the first been
associated with champions
and supreme champions.
Thumb through back issues
of Horse and Hound and
you’ll see the name behind
Longstone: Brian Morey.
His success is remarkable
because he is a hobbyist,
rather than a professional
breeder – but that is not all.
Mr Morey comes from a
world which had nothing,
nothing whatsoever, to do
with horses.
“I’m not Mr Morey, I’m Brian,”
he corrects me firmly. “I won’t call
anyone ‘Sir’ and I don’t want them
calling me ‘Sir’. That’s the only
way I differ from my father.”
Brian was born and brought up
in a council house in Gunville,
an area considered so low that he
didn’t meet some of his cousins
until he was in his thirties – the
family had been split when his
mother married a Gunville man.
His father was a carpenter, and his
mother kept house – for her five
children, gran and grandfather,
and her two brothers-in-law. “My

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sister couldn’t go to bed till the
rest of us did. She slept in the
front room (they say ‘lounge’ now,
but it was always the front room to
us), her head one end, gran’s head
the other on the bed.”
Simply feeding such a
household required ingenuity
and resourcefulness – pigeon and
rabbit, shot with catapults were
staples, just to have a dinner on
the table – so Brian found himself
earning from the age of 10. He
holds out his large, capable hands,
now slightly shaky since a severe
illness, and says: “I was born to
use these, I was born to work,
we all were.” His surroundings
testify to his success as a builder.
Blacklands Farm, where he lives
with Sue, his “diamond” of a wife
of 25 years, is in an idyll of quiet
repose where the moorhens flap on
the carp-filled pond.
“There’s boys down in Gunville
who grew up with me, won’t
come down my lane, because they
thinks I’m a big ‘I Am’. I’m not,
I can assure you I‘m not. I’m
exactly that bloke who grew up in
Gunville.”
He obviously minds about being
misunderstood. Fairness has been
his motto throughout his building
career, and his professional and
personal reputations have been
built on that. His egalitarian
attitude which has bridged the
gap between Gunville and the

pony world was forged when he,
as a “nipper”, worked for the
father of David Biles [the former
high sheriff], feeding pigs and
cattle, and was paid in sweets. “A
few years ago I was introduced
to David’s sister, Joyce. I said:
“d’you know Joyce, the last time

you spoke to me? You were a
young girl up on your pony. I was
a young boy. Your last words to
me were ‘Daddy, remove Morey
from the yard, he swore!’” Brian
bursts out laughing, as indeed
Joyce did when reminded of the
story. But his view that there is no

Longstone Running Free

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