The Fen type tended to be larger, with more bone and extra hair, while the Midlands type tended to have more endurance while being of a finer appearance. Two different types of black horses developed: the Fen or Lincolnshire type and the Leicester or Midlands type. Bakewell imported six Dutch or Flanders mares, notable since breeders tended to concentrate on improving the male line. The Black Horse was improved by the followers of Robert Bakewell, of Dishley Grange in Leicestershire, resulting in a horse sometimes known as the "Bakewell Black". įrom this medieval horse came an animal called the Old English Black Horse in the seventeenth century. During the sixteenth century, Dutch engineers brought Friesian horses with them when they came to England to drain the fens, and these horses may have had an influence on what became the Shire breed. Oliver Cromwell's cavalry favoured lighter, faster mounts and the big horses began to be used for draught work instead. The English Great Horse was valued during the reign of Henry VIII, when stallions measuring less than "fifteen handfuls" could not be kept, but the increasing role of gunpowder brought an end to the use of heavy horses in battle. Though oxen were used for most farm work into the eighteenth century, horses "fit for the dray, the plough, or the chariot" were on sale at Smithfield Market in London as early as 1145. Outside the United Kingdom, there are stud-books and breed associations in Australia, the United States, : 502 and Canada. Numbers began to increase again from the 1970s, but the breed is still considered "at risk" by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust. With the progressive mechanisation of agriculture and of transport, the need for draught horses decreased rapidly and by the 1960s numbers had fallen from a million or more to a few thousand. : 287 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, there were large numbers of Shires, and many were exported to the United States. A breed society was formed in 1876, and in 1878 the first stud-book was published. The Shire breed was established in the mid-eighteenth century, although its origins are much older. One traditional use was for pulling brewer's drays for delivery of beer, and some are still used in this way others are used for forestry, for riding and for commercial promotion.
The Shire has a great capacity for weight-pulling it was used for farm work, to tow barges at a time when the canal system was the principal means of goods transport, and as a cart-horse for road transport. It is a tall breed, and Shires have at various times held world records both for the largest horse and for the tallest horse. The Shire is a British breed of draught horse.
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