The • test of time

The Badminton stables have the lure of an oldfashioned toy yard you dreamt of boxing your steed in as a child. Nearly 150 years after they were built, they're still in fine working order, finds Madeleine Silver

"IT takes your breath away walking under the archway; it's all so grand and historic," says Badminton's stable manager Margaret Hopkins, the magnificence of those Palladian arches still not worn off on her after 15 years in the job on this hallowed turf.

Since 1949, eventing's greats have walked under those arches full of hope, and by the Sunday of Badminton week, another emerges victorious.

If its residents have been iconic, the honey-coloured setting is as nostalgically lust-worthy. The clock tower, the oldfashioned bridle hooks and saddle racks outside the boxes, the servants' quarters above the dog kennels and the creaking weathervanes - all in the shadow of the 17th-century house.

Built in 1878 for the eighth Duke of Beaufort, 45 boxes sit around a quad, with adjacent yards off the quad going towards the house, which would have historically been for the carriage and family horses.

Leafing through stable accounts and diaries from the early 20th century, one from 1908 shows a wages bill for the stable of £66 a fortnight, for the at least 40 people employed here - an indication of the scale of the operation.

"We don't have anything like the number of horses now that used to be here, the most we would have is 25 or 30, mainly hunters, in over the winter. But we can actually stable nearly 100," says Margaret, who took over from the late Brian Higham when he retired aged 77 in 2010.

After meeting the 10th Duke of Beaufort when he was judging at the Great Yorkshire, Brian came to Badminton in 1959 as second man in the stables, later becoming stud groom during an era of grandeur at Badminton.