London's most urban riding school transforms lives through horses

LONDON: Sandwiched between social housing blocks and busy train tracks in south London is Britain’s most urban riding school, where children from disadvantaged backgrounds ​learn to ride horses as part of a project aimed at improving their wellbeing.

About ‌160 children each week attend the Ebony Horse Club, a 30-year-old charity in the Brixton area of the capital which ranks amongst the most deprived in England and is a hotspot for knife crime.

Outside the stables, ​opened in 2011 by Queen Camilla, nine-year-old Matthew Sanchez shovelled horse dung into a ​wheelbarrow before his lesson.

Like many of the children who come for classes, ⁠he had never encountered a horse before. But riding teacher Rachel Scott-Hayward, 37, said the children ​grow in confidence over weeks, learning to ride, grooming the animals and mucking out the stables.

Nylah ​Murray Charles, aged nine, said she was nervous before trotting on a horse for the first time.

“I got scared a bit, but I was like maybe I should just give it a try… when I tried, ​it was actually great and I had fun,” she said.

The club is an oasis of rural ​charm in Brixton, about three miles (5 km) from central London, where the smell of hay hangs in the ‌air. ⁠Lessons are free – a contrast to similar stables in wealthier parts of the city, where a 30-minute class can cost around 50 pounds ($67).

Scott-Hayward said while horse riding was traditionally “a white, upper-class hobby”, the charity made it accessible to local children, about 45% of whom identify as being from ​an ethnic minority.

The stables ​have become a home-from-home ⁠for Shanice Reid, 29, since she first learnt to ride with the project as a schoolgirl. She now teaches at the club, and said ​it offers “somewhere to escape” for those with difficult home or school ​lives.

Between 2010 and ⁠2019, about a third of London’s youth clubs closed due to cuts to public funding, shrinking services for young people just as the pandemic hit.