The Clydesdale Horse Society exists 'to promote, preserve and do our utmost to keep alive this wonderful Breed of Horse', a vulnerable risk breed under Rare Breed Survival Trust categorisations. It invests and reinvests considerable sums every year into breeding to help support breeders in their breeding efforts.[1]
The Clydesdale Horse Society was established on 26 February 1877 at a meeting in the Religious Institution Rooms in Glasgow. The purpose of the society was to establish a Stud Book for the registration of the pedigrees of Clydesdale horses.[2] Amongst the speakers at the meeting were Lord Dunmore, Mr. Baird of Urie, Colonel Buchanan and Mr. John M. Martin, younger.[2] The society had an office within the show yard of the Glasgow Agricultural Society's Show at Burnbank during May 1877, where pedigrees of stallions for publication in the first volume of the stud-book and applications for membership were received.[3] The first general meeting of the Clydesdale Horse Society of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was held in the show yard of the Highland and Agricultural Society's meeting at Edinburgh on the 25th July 1877 at 3.00pm.[4]
John Hendrie, Int. Secretary, 82 West Regent Street, Glasgow, 30th April 1877.[3]
Lord Dunmore, who wrote the preface to the Clydesdale Stud Book.[5][6]
Archibald M'Neilage [7]
Lord Dunmore was chosen as the first President of the Society, expressing the opinion that in two years after the publication of the first volume of the stud-book the Clydesdale breed would have increased 50 per cent in value.[8]
For the purposes of breeding, the society has, historically, produced a Stud Book which operates under rules established and approved by its Editing Committee. The first, or retrospective, volume of the Clydesdale Horse Stud Book was published in December 1977, by which time the breed was known to have been in existence for 150 years.[9]
Clydesdale Horse Society: Style with substance.[1]