Dalesfolk: David Horton

Outside the front door, a bulldozer is clearing up the mess caused when a heavily laden lorry crashed into the wall and gatepost.

Both the sign and the accident mark ways in which the life of David Horton has been sent into turmoil by the present government. You would expect him to be morose, even depressed.

In fact, although extremely angry, he expresses that anger with jokes and subversive comments, just like old soldiers always have. Lions led by donkeys, they called the "other ranks" in World War One. Today, his world being torn to pieces, he shrugs it off with a laugh and a barbed comment.

David Horton, you see, is a groom who has spent most of his adult life working with horses, thanks to the army and then fox hunting and its bone-breaking offshoot, point-to-point steeple-chasing.

He lives with his wife Alison in the gate lodge of Coniston Hall, Coniston Cold, and that lorry careering off the A65 came within a couple of yards of bursting into their sitting room.

It wouldn't have been there at all, of course, if the first action in government of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott had not been to cancel the long-promised bypasses on a road which has been proved to be one of the most dangerous in the country.

Now, the same government is determined to ban foxhunting, which has provided David and thousands like him with their bread and butter for centuries.

When the subject came up, I expected the steam to explode from his ears. Instead, he said with a cool smile: "Of course I am extremely angry - the vast majority of country folk are - but the battle is not lost yet.

"I am lucky because I don't think my job will go - there will always be horses at Coniston. But thousands of hunt servants will lose their jobs and their homes - most live at the kennels - and there are hundreds of small businesses at risk: saddlers, farriers, vets, corn merchants, the horse breeders.

A huge series of coincidences has turned this southern townie into a dyed-in-the-wool Dales countryman.

He was born in Gillingham in Kent in 1945, the son of a shipwright in a family which had no countryside connections whatsoever. Yet there was a field at the bottom of their garden and in it the owner kept horses.

"All I can remember from the earliest childhood is loving horses, yet no-one I knew was in farming or went riding or hunting," he remembers with a nostalgic grin.

"The big question was how could an ordinary town lad with no riding background find himself a job working with horses? For a long time, I longed to be a jockey. But I grew too big so I did the next best thing and joined the army as a boy soldier."

His aim was to get into an elite cavalry regiment, which he did. But not as a horse-bound soldier - he had to join the regimental band and learn to play the clarinet!

But, when not involved in music, he was trained as a groom, looking after not just the regiment's ceremonial mounts but the private stables kept by officers and their wives.

"Those officers and their families were so good to me," he said. "I had never had a proper riding lesson in my life, but I watched and learned and wasn't afraid to ask for advice, which they always willingly gave. In the end, I suppose, I got quite good at it."

That's an understatement. He was selected to join the British army show-jumping team in Germany against the German and French army teams, coming second to the Germans, many of whose team members were Olympic competitors doing their national service.

His team also won the army show jumping championships and he became the army's Soldier Champion, for he never rose above the dizzy heights of corporal. Yet with just two stripes on his sleeve, he also played polo, a sport which even millionaires find a bit pricey.

Back in England, at a point-to-point meeting, one of his officer friends introduced him to Michael Bannister, the then new owner of Coniston Hall, who was taking part in the races. At another meeting, Mr Bannister asked him if he would like a job.

"I jumped at it," he said. "I bought myself out of the army and came here 23 years ago and have loved every minute of it. As a townie from Kent, I sometimes can't believe my luck even now."

It has been a busy time. Michael Bannister has been master of the Pendle Forest and Craven Hunt for well over 20 years, making him one of the longest serving MFHs in the country.

He was also a fanatical steeple-chaser, of whom David says irreverently: "He used to fall off a lot until I started training his horses. So I bought him a big tube of Bostik and he's kept in the saddle every since..."

I roar with laughter but - not wishing to get him into lumber - ask him if I should print that remark.

"Go ahead," he said. "The boss has a great sense of humour and that's been a joke in hunting circles for years."

That sense of humour helped David Horton shoe-horn himself into Craven life as into a well-used riding boot. He taught the Bannister children to ride and is now doing the same for the grandchildren.

He has won prizes at the Gargrave Show, played dame in the Gargrave pantos, is in demand as an MC at the weddings now staged at Coniston, and thanks the lucky stars that pointed him Up North.

Shame that the government seem determined to smash his way of life. But then, politicians never did look after their old soldiers.