Queen Elizabeth II's love of horses was never a hobby she fitted around the job. It was the through line of her whole life. From the Shetland pony called Peggy that her grandfather George V gave her at the age of four, to the Fell pony she was still riding at Windsor in her nineties, Queen Elizabeth's horses were the constant. She bred Classic winners, rode at Trooping the Colour for four decades, and pulled at least one native British breed back from the edge of extinction.
This is the full account: the ceremonial partners, the racehorses that carried her silks, the studs where they were bred, and the rare native breeds she spent decades championing. Where the popular retellings have drifted from the record, we have gone back to the primary sources and said so.
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
How It All Began: Peggy and a Lifetime in the Saddle
Elizabeth was given her first horse at four: a Shetland pony mare named Peggy, a gift from her grandfather, King George V. She was riding by six, and by eighteen she was an accomplished horsewoman. She went on riding for pleasure into her nineties.
That is a genuinely unusual span. Most riders who start at four do not still ride at ninety-five, and most monarchs do not keep a working knowledge of bloodstock for seventy years. The Queen did both, and the two halves fed each other: the rider understood what she was looking at when she inspected a yearling, and the breeder understood what the ridden horse had to be able to do.
Her last public riding photographs, taken at Windsor, show her on a Fell pony rather than a thoroughbred. That detail matters more than it looks. The native ponies, not the Classic winners, were the horses she rode herself.
Queen Elizabeth's Ceremonial Horses
Trooping the Colour: Tommy, Winston and Imperial
From her first appearance as a princess in 1947 until 1986, the Queen attended the annual Trooping the Colour ceremony on horseback. Four horses carried her over those decades.
- Tommy (1947). A bay police horse, and the mount for her very first appearance at the ceremony.
- Winston. Her father's chestnut. She rode him in George VI's place when he was too unwell to attend, and continued to ride him after his death in 1952.
- Imperial. Another chestnut, ridden in the years before her most famous partnership began.
- Burmese (1969 to 1986). Eighteen consecutive years, and the horse most people picture when they picture the Queen on parade.
She rode side saddle at the ceremony throughout, in the traditional manner for a woman reviewing troops. After Burmese was retired in 1987 the Queen stopped riding at Trooping the Colour altogether and attended by carriage instead.
Burmese: The Queen's Most Famous Horse
Burmese was a black mare presented to the Queen by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1969. She had already served as lead horse in the RCMP Musical Ride, which is about as thorough a proofing against noise, crowds and flags as a horse can get.
That steadiness was tested in public in 1981, when a man in the crowd fired six blank shots as the Queen rode down The Mall. Burmese startled and moved sideways; the Queen sat still, shortened her reins and rode on. The footage is still shown as a case study in how a well-schooled horse and a competent rider absorb a fright without it becoming a disaster.
The RCMP presented five more horses to the Queen over the following decades, among them PSH Golden Jubilee in 2002 and PSH Elizabeth in 2012. None of them replaced Burmese in the public memory. A statue of the Queen mounted on Burmese stands on the grounds of the Saskatchewan Legislative Building in Regina.
Windsor Greys, Cleveland Bays and the Household Cavalry Blacks
Not every royal ceremonial horse belonged to the Queen personally, and the breeds are commonly confused. Three distinct groups do the work:
- Windsor Greys. The grey carriage horses that draw the royal coaches on state occasions. Windsor Grey is a role and a colour rather than a breed in its own right.
- Cleveland Bays. Used in harness for carriage work and as ceremonial riding horses. This is the breed the Queen personally rescued, and the one she bred at Hampton Court.
- Cavalry blacks. The black troop horses of the Household Cavalry, largely Irish Draught and Irish Draught crosses, bought as young horses and put through a long remount training programme before they ever appear on parade. The exception is the Household Cavalry drum horse, which is a heavier animal entirely, ridden with the reins worked by the rider's feet.
If you have ever searched for the breed of "the Queen's black horses", the cavalry blacks are almost certainly what you saw. The Windsor Greys that pull the Gold State Coach are a separate group again, and other European courts solve the same problem with their own breeds, such as the Kladruber of the Czech Republic.
Queen Elizabeth's Racehorses: A Champion Owner
Inheriting a Racing Empire
When George VI died in 1952, Elizabeth inherited the entire royal breeding and racing operation intact: the studs, the broodmare band, and the horses in training. She did not build a racing stable from nothing. She took on one that already had depth, and then ran it for seventy years.
As of 2013, horses owned by the Queen had won more than 1,600 races. Excluding the Epsom Derby, they had won every one of the British Classic Races, several of them more than once, plus a French Classic. She was named British flat racing Champion Owner in 1954 and again in 1957, the first reigning monarch ever to do so twice.
The Royal Racing Silks
The silks carried by her jockeys were not new either. They were the colours used by her father and her great-grandfather, King Edward VII: a purple jacket with gold braid, scarlet sleeves, and a black cap. When you see those colours in a British horseracing finish, you are looking at a set of registered colours with well over a century of continuous use behind them.
Aureole: The Coronation Year Colt
Aureole was the first top-class racehorse of the new reign, a chestnut colt bred by George VI and trained by Cecil Boyd-Rochfort. He ran fourteen times and won seven, with three seconds and two thirds, for career earnings of a little over £36,000.
His major wins came in a cluster: the Lingfield Derby Trial and the Cumberland Lodge Stakes in 1953, then the Victor Wild Stakes, the Coronation Cup, the Hardwicke Stakes and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes in 1954. Timeform rated him 132.
He also finished second in the 1953 Epsom Derby, run four days before the coronation. It was the closest the Queen would ever come to winning the race as monarch.
A note on a widely repeated error. Several accounts, including an earlier version of this article, credit Aureole with eleven wins from fourteen starts. His record is 14 starts, 7 wins, 3 seconds, 2 thirds. We have corrected it here.
The Classic Winners
Four horses gave the Queen her British Classic victories, and each win has a detail worth keeping straight:
- Carrozza (Oaks, 1957). Her first British Classic, a filly trained by Noel Murless and ridden by Lester Piggott. The win helped carry her to Champion Owner that season.
- Pall Mall (2,000 Guineas, 1958). A 20/1 upset. His stable companion Bald Eagle was the 7/4 favourite and the one the money was on. Pall Mall took the lead a furlong and a half out and won by half a length from Major Portion.
- Highclere (1,000 Guineas, 1974). Named after the Carnarvon family seat, home of her racing manager. She started at 12/1 in a field of fifteen and beat the favourite Polygamy by a short head, not by a comfortable margin. She followed it with the Prix de Diane at Chantilly, giving the Queen a French Classic.
- Dunfermline (Oaks and St Leger, 1977). Her Silver Jubilee year. Dunfermline ran twelve times in her life and won only three, but two of those three were Classics, and in the St Leger she beat Alleged, the dual Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner. It was the only defeat of Alleged's career.
Estimate and the Royal Ascot Gold Cup
Estimate is the one most people remember, and rightly. A bay filly bred by the Aga Khan's Studs and trained by Sir Michael Stoute, she won the Queen's Vase at Royal Ascot as a three-year-old in 2012, then the Sagaro Stakes and the Ascot Gold Cup in 2013. She was named Cartier Champion Stayer that year. The Gold Cup win made the Queen the first reigning monarch to take the race, and the pictures of her reaction are among the most-published images of her later reign.
There is a postscript that the tribute pieces tend to leave out. In 2014 Estimate finished second in the Gold Cup, then tested positive for morphine in a post-race sample and was disqualified from the placing. The finding was attributed to contaminated feed rather than any deliberate act, and she went on to win the Doncaster Cup later that season. Her career record was 13 starts, 5 wins, one second and two thirds, for £374,228.
If you are visiting the meeting yourself, our guide to the Royal Ascot dress code covers what each enclosure actually requires.
Carlton House and the Derby That Never Came
The Epsom Derby was the one British Classic that always escaped her. Carlton House came closest, in 2011, going to post as favourite and finishing third after a troubled run. He was later trained in Australia. The Queen's horses had won everything else the British programme had to offer; the Derby stayed out of reach for the whole seventy years.
Breeding at the Royal Studs
Sandringham, Wolferton, Friar Marcus and Polhampton
The royal thoroughbreds were bred at the Royal Studs on the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, described as the oldest thoroughbred breeding operation still in continuous use. The operation runs across several units, with stud work at Sandringham, Wolferton and Friar Marcus, and young stock raised on at Polhampton Lodge before going into training.
When she inherited the studs in 1952 they held roughly twenty mares. Everything that followed, every Classic winner in the royal bloodline, traces back through that band.
The Queen's Own Eye for a Horse
What separated her from most owners at that level was that she did the work herself. She visited foals from birth, assessed conformation in person, and took a close interest in which mare went to which stallion. Her bloodstock adviser was John Warren, who succeeded his father-in-law, the 7th Earl of Carnarvon, in 2001. She read the Racing Post at breakfast.
Her interest was not confined to the flat. Her polo pony breeding produced Doublet, the part-bred on which Princess Anne won the European Eventing Championship at Burghley in 1971. Her head groom Terry Pendry summarised the result with a line that has been quoted ever since: the Queen bred both the horse and the rider.
If you want the mechanics behind decisions like these, our guide to horse breeding covers mare selection, covering and foaling in detail, and our thoroughbred profile explains what the breed was shaped to do.
Preserving Britain's Rare Native Breeds
This is the part of the story with the most lasting practical effect, and also the part most often overstated. The Queen made a real and measurable difference to three native breeds. She did not, however, take any of them out of danger, and it is worth being precise about that.
The Cleveland Bay: A Rescue That Is Not Finished
The Cleveland Bay is Britain's oldest native horse breed, historically used for farm work, harness and artillery haulage. Its decline accelerated after the Second World War, and in 1960 the War Office stopped offering premiums on stallions, which removed the last commercial reason for many breeders to continue. By 1962 only four purebred stallions remained in the United Kingdom.
One of those four, Mulgrave Supreme, was about to be sold to a buyer in the United States. The Queen bought him. He was put to purebred and part-bred mares, and within fifteen years the UK had thirty-six purebred stallions. She became patron of the Cleveland Bay Horse Society in 1977. Without that single purchase the breed would very likely have ceased to exist in Britain.
What is not true is that this removed the breed from the endangered list. The Rare Breeds Survival Trust still classes the Cleveland Bay as a Priority breed, its highest category of concern, and the US-based Livestock Conservancy also considers the population to be at critical limits. Earlier versions of this article, and a great many other tributes, described the Queen's intervention as having taken the Cleveland Bay off the endangered register. It did not. It bought the breed sixty years it would not otherwise have had, and the conservation job is still open.
Fell Ponies at Hampton Court
The Queen kept a Fell pony stud at Hampton Court and was patron of the Fell Pony Society. Fell ponies were the horses she actually rode in her last years, and the breed's combination of substance, sure-footedness and sane temperament is exactly what an elderly rider on rough Windsor ground needs. The Fell Pony is currently listed by the RBST as an At Risk breed.
Highland Ponies at Balmoral
Her Highland pony stud at Balmoral bred working ponies for the hill: animals with enough bone and enough sense to carry red deer off the estate during the stalking season. Temperament was the first selection criterion rather than looks, which is the correct priority for a pony that has to stand still on a slope under an awkward load. The Highland Pony is also currently listed by the RBST as At Risk, and the Highland Pony Society remains the breed's registry.
Taken together, the RBST currently counts twelve of Britain's fourteen native horse and pony breeds as rare. The Queen's work slowed a decline; it did not reverse it. For anyone deciding what to breed or buy next, that is the useful part of her legacy, and the British Horse Society publishes guidance on supporting native breeds.
Emma: The Fell Pony at the Funeral
Of all the images from September 2022, the one that landed hardest with horse people was not in the Abbey.
As the funeral procession turned onto the Long Walk towards Windsor Castle on 19 September 2022, the Queen's Fell pony, Emma, stood at the side of the route as the cortege passed, alongside her two corgis, Muick and Sandy. Around 97,000 people lined the route that afternoon.
Emma, whose full name is Carltonlima Emma, was the pony the Queen had ridden at Windsor in her final years, including in photographs released in 2022 that were among the last taken of her on horseback.
It is the detail that answers what most people are really asking when they search for what happened to the Queen's horses. The racehorses were an enterprise. Emma was the one she rode.
A Family of Horse People
The Queen's horses sit inside a family that has produced genuine international competitors, not just enthusiastic patrons:
- Prince Philip was President of the FEI from 1964 to 1986 and a serious carriage driving competitor, becoming world champion in four-in-hand driving with the British team in 1980. He played a significant part in the development of the discipline itself.
- Princess Anne won the European Eventing Championship at Burghley in 1971 on Doublet and rode at the 1976 Montreal Olympics on the Queen's horse Goodwill, becoming the first member of the British royal family to compete at an Olympic Games.
- Zara Tindall, Anne's daughter, won the Eventing World Championship in 2006 and a team silver at London 2012, much of it aboard Toytown.
Three generations at championship level in eventing is not a coincidence of privilege alone. It reflects a household in which riding was normal, competent instruction was constant, and horses were bred on the premises.
What Happened to Queen Elizabeth's Horses After She Died
The Queen died on 8 September 2022, and her horses passed to King Charles III. The transition was quick and, by racing standards, businesslike.
- Charles's first winner in his own right, Just Fine, came at Leicester in October 2022.
- Later that month he announced plans to sell a first tranche of horses, and within weeks around thirty of the roughly one hundred thoroughbreds he had inherited had gone through the ring. The Guardian reported the sales raised a little over £2.25 million.
- Since March 2023 the King and Queen Camilla have been joint owners of the remaining royal horses.
- The Royal Studs continue to operate at Sandringham, and the native pony studs at Hampton Court and Balmoral have been retained.
The scale is smaller than it was. The racing operation the Queen ran was unusually large for a private owner and reflected seventy years of accumulation; a reduction was always likely whoever inherited it.
A Legacy Written in Hoofprints
Strip away the ceremonial and the numbers still stand up. More than 1,600 wins as of 2013. Every British Classic except the Derby. Champion Owner twice, the only reigning monarch to manage it. A Royal Ascot Gold Cup at the age of eighty-seven. Ninety years in the saddle, from Peggy to Emma.
The most durable part may be the least glamorous. Anyone breeding a Cleveland Bay today is working in a landscape the Queen materially shaped, and the Cleveland Bay exists in Britain at all because she wrote a cheque in the early 1960s. That breed is still a Priority breed on the RBST watchlist, which is the honest measure of both what she achieved and how much is left to do.
For the wider context of the breed that dominated her racing life, see our thoroughbred breed profile and our full thoroughbred history and care guide. Wikipedia also maintains a detailed record of the horses of Elizabeth II.
She was, in the end, a horsewoman who happened to be a monarch, and the horses knew nothing about the second part. That is probably why she liked them. Even a champion like Frankel does not care who is holding the rein.
Frequently Asked Questions
What was Queen Elizabeth's first horse?
A Shetland pony named Peggy, given to her by her grandfather King George V when she was four years old. She was riding by the age of six and was considered an accomplished horsewoman by eighteen.
Which of Queen Elizabeth's horses was her most famous?
Burmese, a black mare presented by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in 1969. The Queen rode her side saddle at Trooping the Colour for eighteen consecutive years, from 1969 until 1986, including in 1981 when a man in the crowd fired six blank shots and the mare was quickly settled.
What happened to Queen Elizabeth's horse Emma?
Emma, a Fell pony properly named Carltonlima Emma, was the pony the Queen rode at Windsor in her final years. On 19 September 2022 she was led out to stand beside the Long Walk as the Queen's funeral procession passed Windsor Castle, handled by head groom Terry Pendry.
Did Queen Elizabeth's horses ever win the Epsom Derby?
No. The Derby was the only British Classic that eluded her. Aureole was second in 1953, the coronation year, and Carlton House was third as favourite in 2011. Her horses won every other British Classic, some of them several times.
Who owns Queen Elizabeth's horses now?
They passed to King Charles III on her death in September 2022, and since March 2023 the King and Queen Camilla have been joint owners. Around thirty of the roughly one hundred thoroughbreds she left were sold within the first few months, reported by the Guardian to have raised just over £2.25 million.
What breed are the Queen's black ceremonial horses?
The black horses of the Household Cavalry are largely Irish Draughts and Irish Draught crosses, bought as young horses and schooled through a long remount programme. They are distinct from the grey carriage horses known as Windsor Greys, and from the Cleveland Bays used in harness and for ceremonial riding.
Which rare breeds did Queen Elizabeth help save?
Principally the Cleveland Bay, whose UK population had fallen to four purebred stallions by 1962 before she bought Mulgrave Supreme and prevented his export. She also bred Fell ponies at Hampton Court and Highland ponies at Balmoral. All three breeds remain on the Rare Breeds Survival Trust watchlist today, the Cleveland Bay as a Priority breed and the other two as At Risk.
