( EQUESTRIAN CHARACTERS remembered )


THE HON. ISOLDE SHEILA TOWER MONCK founder of The Yaverland Stud


24th April 1925 -24th April 2007 Written by Jo Monck


If you are lucky enough to own a section A Welsh Mountain pony the chances are that you may find a Y somewhere in its history


averland prefix , Stud prefix’s are something we all


see on our horses papers and they become familiar names without us ever actually seeing the stud that the prefix is associated with, or sometimes not knowing the background or the people who were passionate about breeding the horses we have. Let me introduce both the Y extraordinary woman who started it.


averland Stud and the


Hon. Isolde Sheila Tower Monck, daughter of Lord Dunboyne, known simply to all as Sheila, I never heard her use the title and I think it was of little importance to her, in her journey of breeding the exquisite section A Welsh mountain ponies that graced the fields of Yaverland Manor on the Isle of Wight.


T Sheila grew up in a wartime London, and was considered


extremely giſted at mathematics. At an extraordinarily young age, having taken her exams early, she was draſted to work at Admiralty House. Here she calculated bomb trajectories, which must have been a task that not many would have had the knowledge or precise decision making required for that incredibly responsible position. She was in the Capital during the blitz surviving a bomb that landed in front of her, in fact so close that the fallout went over her head, she survived and also carried on to work that day! It was a job that she did until the end of the war in 1942.


he Yaverland Stud was founded by my mother-in-law, The


Aſter the war she met her husband to be Penryn Monck and


moved to the Isle of Wight, to the incredibly romantic location of Yaverland, a thousand year old manor house mentioned in the Doomsday book, surrounded by it’s own land and situated on the East Coast of the Island with an extensive history of it’s own which could occupy pages. so I won’t linger on that for fear of digressing totally. It was a place where extraordinary things happened and was probably the home of the first quarter horse in England that later went on to compete at Badminton, Sancho Kim, known as Sancho. Sancho was a surprise giſt sent from America as a thank you present. Suffice to say it was a place that on the Island that became synonymous with the Welsh Mountain Pony. Sheila had purchased an incredible all round family pony called


Ready Token Rikki for her daughter Tasha, who later went on to her youngest daughter Fiona, and then on to other children across the Island that learned to ride on him. Rikki was a bit of a


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