Margaret Runcie, horsewoman who produced a long succession of champion ponies – obituary

Margaret Runcie, who has died aged 97, was an influential figure in the equestrian world, as a successful breeder of top-class Highland and Welsh Mountain ponies, and as a respected judge; the Rosslyn Stud near Edinburgh, which she founded in 1958, produced scores of champion riding ponies over the next four decades.

She won every major honour, including a record 18 championships at her “local” Royal Highland Show, and she campaigned vigorously to raise standards in breeding, pony welfare and show ring organisation.

Margaret Mary Power was born on October 19 1925 into a comfortable middle-class home at Hatfield, Hertfordshire, the second of five outdoorsy children. Her father Frank was a prosperous grain merchant and the family had a nanny, nursery maid and a trap, pulled by a donkey called Buddy.

Aged three, Margaret, a doll-like child so tiny she was nicknamed Midge, began riding Buddy, as a Shetland would have been too wide. After a crashing fall from the donkey, Margaret was given riding lessons at her mother’s insistence and joined the local Enfield Chace Pony Club, where she later competed in showing, show jumping and cross-country events.

There, Margaret met the inspirational instructor Joan Middleton, universally known as “Miss Midd”. Margaret was deeply influenced by Miss Midd’s strict but fair attitude to equine management and training, and later showed the same dedication in her own career.

“We were a competitive little lot, but in the right way,” she recalled, “as Miss Midd would never stand for any bad sportsmanship.”

A bright, athletic girl, Margaret boarded at Effingham House in Bexhill, Sussex, a girls’ private school with just 52 pupils. The genteel social accomplishments were considered at least as important as academic pursuits, and with 13 tennis courts, every girl could play tennis at once.

The school was evacuated to mid-Wales at the outbreak of war and Margaret Runcie left in 1941, having passed her School Certificate. With the male Enfield Chace hunt servants mostly away on active service, she and Miss Midd kept the Hunt going, whipping in and exercising the hounds every morning.

In 1943 Margaret Runcie joined the WRENS and trained as a radio and radar mechanic in Warrington and London, where she would watch planes flying at night along the Thames past Battersea Power Station, lit up by anti-aircraft searchlights.

In June 1944 she was posted as a radio mechanic to HMS Jackdaw, the Fleet Air Arm base at Crail, Fife, on the far eastern tip of Scotland, where she changed and recharged the batteries of planes returning from sorties across the North Sea and repaired broken valve radios.

The work involved riding a wobbly bike in pitch darkness across the airfield clutching a heavy battery, with leaking acid dripping down her uniform. She was assigned first to 786 Squadron, which flew Barracuda torpedo bombers, then to 785 Squadron, which used Avenger bombers.

After being demobbed in 1946 she qualified as an aviation mechanic but was firmly told these jobs were reserved for ex-servicemen. Eager for an outdoor career, she studied Dairy Animal Science at Reading University, also coxing the women’s rowing eight and playing first string at squash. She then joined the National Agricultural Advisory Service in Leicestershire as a milk tester, mainly in the Belvoir Valley, where she resumed her hunting and showing activities.

In 1953 she won a scholarship to take a Masters at Cornell University in the US and became one of the first women to study agriculture there. Her research on modern milk transportation paid off: within a decade 90 per cent of farms in the UK and US had switched from using small, old-fashioned churns, with milk often going off in the sun, to having their milk collected by chilled bulk tankers.

During her studies she met the Scots agriculturalist Ken Runcie and the couple married in 1956, settling at Langhill, a research farm at Roslin, near Edinburgh, which Ken managed for Edinburgh University.

In 1958, pregnant with her first son, Margaret Runcie switched from riding in horse classes to breeding and showing ponies. She bought Elizabeth Arden, a favourite riding pony from England, over the phone, convinced that her conformation and temperament would make her an ideal foundation mare for the fledgling Rosslyn Stud.

This proved an inspired purchase: the pony won the Supreme Championship at the 1960 Royal Highland Show, the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh presenting the trophy.

Margaret Runcie became a regular at pony auctions in Hay-on-Wye and in mid-Wales, buying newly weaned foals off the Welsh hills. She relished jousting with the rugged Welsh-speaking hill farmers to secure a promising prospect. If a handsome youngster had already been snapped up, the traditional phrase “Will you take profit?” usually sealed the deal. She invariably arrived home in the small hours with a horsebox full of hairy Welsh foals to join the herd in a nearby glen for the next two years.

As the successes multiplied, the stud moved to Garvald Grange, a 35-acre farm east of Edinburgh in 1967. Margaret Runcie was renowned for her ability to analyse the strengths of her stock, breeding in improvements using specific stallions. She demanded clean lines, fine limbs, a good shoulder and gentle temperament befitting a child’s pony.

Two of Elizabeth Arden’s top progeny, Rosslyn Personality and Rosslyn Sweet Talk, bred excellent foals every spring until their late 20s. Margaret Runcie carefully trained nearly all her youngstock at home, to be sold for riding and showing.

Arguably the best pony she ever bred, the bay mare Rosslyn Sweet Repose, was never beaten in a show class. She won consecutive Highland Championships from 1994 to 1997, taking the coveted Queen’s Cup in 1996 and winning the Supreme In-Hand Championship at the Horse of the Year Show in 2001.

Famed for her work ethic, thrift and attention to detail, Margaret Runcie had no time for “fashionable fripperies”, making her ponies’ rugs from old satin curtains and army blankets with a jute rug on top. She also refused to replace her ancient, slow lorry with something smarter, insisting: “It’s not the lorry that matters but what comes out of it.”

With her unerring eye for horseflesh and sense of fair play she became a popular judge, and thanks to her slight stature she could ride the ponies in native breed classes. In 1961 she and two friends set up the Scottish Committee of the National Pony Society (NPS). Her innovations included an annual stallion parade to encourage owners to use better-quality animals and a Scotland-wide dried milk and colostrum scheme for orphan foals.

Having served as president of the NPS during its centenary year, 1993, and for an unprecedented second term, she was awarded its Medal of Honour. She also received the Royal Highland Agricultural Society’s Sir William Young Award for her contribution to Scottish livestock breeding, the first equestrian personality and first woman so honoured.

In 1997 she retired from showing but remained closely involved with the breeding world well into her 90s, as a judge and adviser valued for her generosity and depth of experience.

Margaret Runcie's husband, who was appointed OBE for services to agriculture, died in 2011. She is survived by her two sons.

Margaret Runcie, born October 19 1925, died December 23 2022