Letter: Has Anyone Seen One of These?

Published on: 12 Aug, 2019
Updated on: 12 Aug, 2019

St Catherine’s Horse “Brass”

From Matthew Alexander

Hon Remembrancer at Guildford Borough Council

From the middle of the 19th century it was fashionable to decorate horse harness with circular brass pendants of various designs. This is a rare example of one of these horse “brasses”. Actually, it is made of sheet copper, not brass, and shows no signs of ever having been mounted on horse leather.

It depicts St Catherine’s chapel. A stamped-out blank has been carefully beaten out to represent the hill. Filing marks show that the profile of the chapel was cut by hand, and the surface detailing has been engraved. The patina suggests that it is fairly old; perhaps late 19th or early 20th century.

It may possibly have been made as a souvenir of the St Catherine’s Hill Fair. However, it would have been very labour-intensive to make. I would suspect that if there had ever been such souvenir brasses, they would more likely have been mass-produced by casting or machine-stamping. The National Horse Brass Society has never seen any like it; has anybody else?