Progress

Today we sent the following letter to Her Majesty the Queen in her capacity of Patron of the Shire Horse Society. Copies of our petition and your comments were enclosed. We also requested a meeting with CHL Trustees to present them with our petition. Gillian Dow acknowledged our request and has committed to agreeing to a date after consulting CHL's Trustees. 19th October 2017 Madam, I am writing to you in your capacity as Patron of the Shire Horse Society on behalf of my fellow residents, and your loyal subjects, of the village of Chawton, Hampshire. We ask that you write to Dr. Linda Bree, the Acting Chair of Chawton House Library’s (CHL) Trustees to support our efforts to restore Shire Horses to their Estate. CHL is a Regency Estate and charitable institution whose Trustees recently closed the Estate's stables, made the staff redundant and evicted their four iconic Shire Horses (Royston; Speedy; Isaac & Summer). James McBain, CHL’s Chief Operating Officer, attempted to justify the decision by stating that the horses "were not economically viable & not very robust." In making their decision the Trustees treated our local village community with disdain and made no public statement until the news was disclosed via a social media backlash. The Shire Horses contributed much to our community. They attended all the village fetes and fundraising events. As tourist attractions, they frequently stood on the village green outside Jane Austen’s House. The children of the village Primary School made frequent visits to their stables to learn about, and admire, these gentle giants. As a charity CHL has three objectives. Firstly, to maintain the fabric of the Regency House and Estate. Secondly, to administer a library of women’s writing. Thirdly, to run the Estate as a working 18th century English farm. The Charity's Trustees have violated one of their guiding principles in disposing of their horses. Shires were the tractors and combine harvesters of 18th-century agriculture and, as an endangered species should have a prominent part to play in today’s world. Our supporters have created an online petition to request that CHL’s Trustees reconsider their regrettable decision and restore Shire Horses to the Estate. In less than three weeks, we have attracted 1,052 supporters from all parts of the UK and twenty other countries. Additionally, a hard copy of the petition has been circulated amongst the village’s 178 household’s and gained the support of a clear majority. We attach hard copies of the resident petitioners to demonstrate the passionate local support for restoring Shire Horses to this habitat. As a separate appendix we attach a sample of the supportive comments recorded by our petitioners. I am certain that Your Majesty can relate to these opinions. We appreciate that Your Majesty cannot become embroiled in personal or political issues but we regard this as a humanitarian and ecological matter and request your support to restore Shire Horses by writing to Doctor Bree. Thank you on behalf of CHL's former Shires. We have the honour to be, Madam, Your Majesty's humble and obedient servants.