A walk around the Badminton stables with Brian Higham (From Gazette Series)

A walk around the Badminton stables with Brian Higham

IN THREE weeks time it will all be over. Badminton will return to being the quiet village that it is for 51 weeks a year and the grass will begin to grow over tyre tracks and hoof prints. But now, in the run up to the horse trials, preparations are underway for the arrival of 200,000 spectators, 95 competitors and over 80 horses (with accompanying lads, grooms, trainers and owners).

In the stable yard Yorkshireman Brian Higham, the 11th Duke of Beaufort's stud groom, is overseeing operations. Originally from Snainton, in the Vale of Pickering, Brian, 72, has worked at Badminton since 1959. He was employed by the 10th Duke as second man after an interview that took place at the Great Yorkshire Show and he came south to join his uncle who was then the kennel huntsman.

Inside the stables little has changed since that time. Built in stages during the second half of the 19th century the floors are of flagstones or tiles, laid upon cinders. There are no drains and so each stall has to be hosed down and swept out diligently. With horses soon to arrive from all over the world the floors are washed with a detergent that kills ringworm, bacteria and viruses. The same attention to detail is paid to the walls and doors. Paint and varnish are renewed, stray nails removed and bent bars, to which someone probably tied a horse last year, are straightened.

When the competitors arrive all will be ready, including the bedding of choice in each stall (wood shavings are increasingly popular because the horses can't eat them). For teams coming from abroad, forage will be provided.

Above the stables, in rooms that have also been lucky to avoid improvement, the foreign competitors will sleep on firm old beds of brass or oak. Other competitors will stay in caravans or lorries, a few in the house.

Modernisation has crept into the old servants' hall this year in the form of under floor heating and a new carpet. Copper pans, skillets and jelly moulds hang in a ring about the room and above them the antlers of stags, long dead. Here the grooms will take their meals.

"We enjoy the week," Brian says. "There are loads of friends, lots of people staying. You meet all of the top eventing people over the years."

Then, when they've all gone, the place remains the same. A leather numnah sits in the tack room alongside horse blankets drying over heated racks. There are old yeomanry saddles here too, with built-in holsters and scabbards. Next door in the office you can leaf through the stable accounts and diaries for any year you wish and see that in 1908, when at least forty people were employed here, the wages bill for the stables was £66 (a fortnight).