More Celtic Ponies: Beswick's Terese of Leam

While cruising Facebook a couple of weeks ago, I was served up a reel that showed a lovely parade of Connemara pony stallions entering the show ring at the 2025 Dublin Horse Show. As I've mentioned before, I'm a shameless Celtophile, and that includes everything from ancient history and archaeology to music to modern native ponies. Facebook has continued to suggest more Connemara Pony content for me everyday since, and I am 100% on board with this algorithmic trend. 

It reminded me however of a back-burner grail I've been wanting for a number of years, the Beswick Connemara Pony "Terese of Leam." I've looked at dozens of them on eBay over the years, but not surprisingly, nearly all of them were being sold from Britain (where Beswicks originate), and I always worry about clinkies making the long journey across the Atlantic, especially after seeing on the Facebook Beswick collectors group how many Bessies get absolutely smashed just traveling within the UK. 

On a whim, I opened a new tab and had a quick look through eBay. I found a broken but cheap example stateside and added it to my watch list. I've had a ton of practice fixing broken clinkies, so I don't mind repaired pieces in my collection. But then I promptly forgot about it until after it sold for a bargain basement price. Doh! Cue opening a tab and looking at Beswick ponies again. I was delighted to find another nice Connemara that was here in the US being sold by a fellow china collector, that was priced reasonably, and that also happened to have an original hang tag. I am a sucker for paper ephemera, and I was gratified to see the seller's assurance that they would pack the pony in foam (the safest way to ship clinkies), so all of these factors felt like fate telling me to buy the pony.

(Also, the pony told me her name (Jenny of Oldstones) which is when I know a model has to join my herd. Once they have a name, it's all over. This is also how I came to have a Raakid resin (Gil-Galad). (As you can see, there is a decidedly nerdy bent to my model horse naming conventions.))

Anyway, I was the only bidder, and my lovely new Beswick Connemara Pony arrived safe and sound. I don't collect many Beswicks, but I really like the Mountain and Moorland pony series, and I hope to eventually acquire all nine of them. So far, I have three---in addition to the Connemara, I also have the Highland Pony and the Welsh Mountain Pony (as well as the Fjord whom I consider an honorary tenth member despite being a Norwegian breed). 

Having received my lovely new pony and delightedly taken some photos of her, I carefully tucked her into my china cabinet and then sat down at my computer to Google the real Terese of Leam. Her little Beswick hang tag said she was a champion, so I figured her story would make for a quick and easy blog post. How wrong I was!

Welcome to the herd!

Google produced links to dozens of Beswick ponies, but nothing at all about the real mare. I surfed over to allbreedpedigree.com which did not have a listing for Terese of Leam but instead had one for Teresa of Leam. Mysteriously, her pedigree was entirely blank---all of her forebears were listed as "unknown." The site did at least list her birth year (1943) and her registration number with the Connemara Society as well as a few of her offspring. There was also an intriguing note that her name had been changed. A bit more Googling turned up her other name, Waterfield Grey, on a German pedigree site but still no known parentage. 

My curiosity was piqued. How could Terese of Leam have been famous enough to attract the interest of Beswick's main equestrian sculptor Arthur Gredington but have essentially no information about her at all available online? How could a champion pony's pedigree not even be known? Why did her name change and did Beswick spell it wrong? To find answers, I reached out to some Connemara breeders on Facebook to see if anyone could shed some light on her story. They directed me to a couple of excellent books by Pat Lyne, a Connemara breeder and the founder of the annual publication The Connemara Chronicle. While the books only contained a few references to Teresa of Leam, I was able to piece together a reasonable history for the mare.

Teresa of Leam's story is closely tied to the formal organization of the Connemara Pony registry that began in 1923. And that organization, or at least the date of its founding, very likely has its origins in Ireland's struggle for independence from English rule. To make a very long, very bloody story very short, England has been meddling in Irish rule since at least the 12th century. Needless to say, this was not popular in Ireland, especially after the Reformation and Henry VIII's refutation of Catholicism. In the late 1800s where our story really gets started, the occupying English government in County Galway on the western coast of Ireland decided that the local horses and ponies were in dire need of improvement. To remedy this, they introduced several stallions to the area to breed to qualified mares, most of which were Hackneys (to the consternation of the locals), as well as a few Welsh, Arab, and TB stallions. [1]

By 1901, Galway natives had become concerned that the old type of pony found in the Connemara region of that county had become scarce. However, the first two decades of the twentieth century were a time of intense upheaval not only with World War I in Europe but in particular with a war for home rule in Ireland. In 1922, the conflict was finally resolved (to some extent) with Northern Ireland remaining a part of the United Kingdom and the rest if Ireland including Galway becoming an independent nation. 

In 1923 then, concerned Connemara natives were finally able to formally organize a registry for the hardy ponies of their region. Ponies were inspected by members of the newly formed Connemara Pony Society and assigned registry numbers if they passed muster. It is against this backdrop that Teresa of Leam's story begins. She was foaled near Oughterard, Ireland, in 1943, and a few years later, she was "spotted over a stone wall" by leading Connemara Pony breeder Jack Bolger who bought her and registered her as Waterfield Grey. According to author Pat Lyne, "she had no known pedigree but was a mare who showed some class and plenty of type and was accepted for registration on inspection." [2]

In 1947, John and Phyllis O'Mahony Meade founded Leam Stud in Chepstow, Wales. [3] They were good friends of Jack Bolger and his wife Teresa and purchased some foundation stock for their pony breeding venture from the Bolgers. One of those ponies was Waterfield Grey whom they renamed Teresa of Leam. Jack's grandson Henry confirmed to me that the Meade's renamed the mare in honor of his grandmother. 

While I haven't been able to find out a great deal about the specifics of Teresa's show career other than she was Supreme Champion at the English Connemara Pony Society's show in 1955 and 1956, by all accounts, she was a well-known and regular winner at other important shows in the 1950s and 1960s. Pat Lyne wrote that Connemara Pony breeding was still very much in its infancy in England at that time, [4] so presumably, her winning ways are how she came to the attention of Beswick. The photo below is the only one I have been able to find of the real Teresa of Leam. 

The real mare from Pat Lyne's excellent book Out of the Mist:
A Further Study of the Connemara Pony Throughout the 
World Wherever He is Bred and Used (1990)

Teresa of Leam also became a noteworthy broodmare. Though only four of her offspring were registered, she produced at least six foals between the early 1950s and 1964. They were Paddy of Leam (gelding, imported in utero, early 1950s), Finola of Leam (mare, 1958), Keirin of Leam (stallion, 1959), Feargus of Leam (stallion, 1960), Leam Trefoil (mare, 1964), and Kevin of Leam (unknown).

Keirin of Leam proved to be a reasonably successful sire in England before being exported to South Africa in 1967 and then to Zimbabwe the following year. He was crossed with a variety of breeds there and his offspring were reported to be excellent saddle horses. But Teresa's real legacy was passed on through her stellar daughter Finola of Leam. 

Finola was by the highly influential stallion Lavalley Rebel who was a tail male grandson of Cannon Ball, the very first pony registered with the Connemara Pony Society. She was sent back to Ireland to be bred with the top stallion there, Carna Bobby, and produced two champion stallions by him, Coosheen Finn and Leam Bobby Finn. Pat Lyne wrote that Leam Bobby Finn was the most influential sire of the 1970s in England [5], and his impact on English Connemara breeding was comparable to that of his sire's influence in Ireland. [6] Leam Bobby Finn's prepotency is still alive in Connemara pedigrees today. His grandson Dexter Leam Pondi for example was a terrific show jumper and prolific sire. Like many Connemaras, Finola and Teresa's offspring were talented jumpers and have passed along that ability for generations.

In the early 1960s, Teresa of Leam was still an active show pony and broodmare. In 1961, Beswick introduced its Mountain and Moorland line of Native ponies including their likeness of Teresa as model number 1641. Somewhere along the line, the spelling of her name seems to have been confused, and Beswick called her Terese rather than Teresa. Like most of Beswick's horses, the model was sculpted by Arthur Gredington, and it remained in production until 1984. My pony has a tiny glazed number 97 on her belly which indicates the Beswick decorator who painted her. In this case, that would be Sandra Massey who apparently worked for the company for 15 years. Sandra did a particularly lovely job on my pony---in addition to the soft grey color and the nice dappling, this pony also has subtle grey shading all over that brings out the surprising crispness of the mold.

I have been super frugal with pony purchases in the last year and a half out of necessity, so I'm exceedingly pleased that my (frankly cheap) new Bessie is a really stellar example of the Connemara run. It's truly one of Gredington's nicest sculptures in my opinion. I just wish it came in more colors! 

Having been immersed in Connemara Pony history for the last few weeks now, I have a desperate itch to hop on a plane and visit Ireland. Obviously, that's not in the cards for me any time soon, but it's definitely a bucket list item for many reasons. In the meantime, I'm going to have to seek out physical copies of Pat Lyne's books to further immerse myself in the story of these wonderful ponies. Pat visited Ireland many times and collected the story of the Connemara breed from letters, diaries, and the families of the people involved in founding the breed society. She sadly passed away in February of 2021 at the age of 91, but she left behind an incredible legacy in the knowledge she compiled and shared about the history of the breed she loved best. I am so grateful for her insights into Teresa of Leam, her offspring, and her impact on the Connemara Pony breed.


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1) Lyne, Pat. Shrouded in Mist, A Study of the Connemara Pony From its Earliest Days to 1963. (Leominster, England: Orphans Press Ltd., 1984), 31.

2) Lyne, Pat. Out of the Mist: A Further Study of the Connemara Pony Throughout the World Wherever He is Bred and Used. (Leominster, England: Orphans Press Ltd., 1990), 47.

3) Ibid, 10.

4) Ibid, 67.

5) Ibid, 11.

6) Ibid, 25.