Driftbridge Stables

A Memory of Drift Bridge.

I was too young in the 1950’s to use the Hotel and pub but I learnt to ride at the Driftbridge Stables, that used the land, stables and coach houses from when the hotel had been a Coaching Inn. Having learnt to ride on Nutmeg, I progressed to Toby. When I was more competent I was permitted to progress from the one hour rides over Epsom Downs to the weekly two hour ride and I would ride Penny, a chestnut mare and my friend the chestnut gelding George. I believe that they were sibling ponies. My friend, as we were the only two youngsters on the 2hr ride, would stay with her aunt at the Driftbridge Hotel each weekend and spend the weekend on several rides, I quite envied her! We would begin the ride going up Fir Tree Road and up onto the Downs. Whilst I never went into the hotel, I do remember an off-licence stable door to one side by the old stable where a horse called Duchess was stabled. That was a lonely stable and they changed the occupant regularly, Duke was also put there for a while and then they moved Penny and George into this large brick stable. These two ponies were always stabled together and moved between the stable at the back of the hotel and one of the old coach houses at the top of the stables car parking area. The coach house doors would be left open by day they had a bar across the opening and could see the other horses stabled in the yard, I think 6, with the tack and feed rooms in the middle of each set of three. The horses were Teddy, the Major's horse, Date, Midnight, Duke or Duchess on rotation and a couple of others whose names escape me. The manure heap on the right by the entrance as you went into the yard. Four ponies,Nutmeg, Toby, Star and Stardust would be hitched to posts by the coach houses alongside the sand school. Once I was a little older my parents allowed me to spend the school helping with mucking out, cleaning tack and the best bit – being allowed to ride one of the four ponies bareback to their field at night, which was behind the Major's house and we would walk back from there. There was a garage just beyond the hotel, a large garage on the corner and I remember that one year they filmed Candid Camera there, filling a Bubble Car with an unexpectedly large amount of petrol. Another memory of that time was the bus stop at the bottom of the road, I would watch for it coming from under the railway bridge, and I’d catch the 164 to home in Sutton. One Saturday some older riders from the 2hr Saturday morning ride, who had a car, an old Austin I think, offered me a lift back to Sutton. I sat quietly in the back as the 3 of them chatted and then the lady in the front passenger seat got a gun out of the glove compartment. I was so very, very scared - but all was well. It was, with hindsight I suppose, a wartime souvenir of service. By 1964, my parents had finally conceeded that I was horse-mad, relented and I had my own pony, my riding from Driftbridge stables then stopped.

---

---