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Welcome to the Stepney Bank Stables Website.
Stepney Bank Stable’s Equestrian Activity and Education Centre is unique, offering horse riding, pony trekking and riding lessons near the centre of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. We are the only project of its kind and were presented with a Queens Award for Excellence in 2003.
And we have an interesting and diverse heritage too!
Our Heritage
The Stable’s top yard is an original nineteenth century stables which lends itself very well to learning at Stepney. It has many original features with cobbled yard and buildings dating back to 1897. Visitors here can step back in time and view a real life working stable yard.
This project offers opportunities for: learning about how horses lived over the last hundred years, including the improvements in welfare, studying the change of use of equines from working to leisure animals, and, investigating the lives of the people who worked with them.
The idea came about as a result of increased visitor numbers on site. We are included in the annual Heritage Open Days and local heritage walks in the valley. Visitors are always interested in speaking to the young people about the history of our site and the involvement of the horses. The young people are fascinated to learn about the changing role and management of the horses they so love. It is a fantastic opportunity encourage them to think about and explore heritage in meaningful and enjoyable way.
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We are a registered charity made famous by the TV Show ‘The Stables’ and also a British Horse Society and Pony Club of Great Britain approved centre. Our superb team of qualified instructors provide a range of lessons in our state of the art facility to both charitable beneficiaries and commercial users.
The family atmosphere and customer care centred approach make us the ideal choice for learning to ride or for providing horse mad youngsters with a range of additional activities to satisfy their thirst for pony fun!
As Stepney Bank Stables is a ‘project’ as opposed to a business all monies received go directly towards supporting our very valuable work.
By choosing to ride with us you can not only have a fantastic time, learn valuable skills whilst keeping fit but you will also be helping people less advantaged than yourself.
And there are so many people we’d like to thank.
The People Who We’d Like To Thank
The Stables is a very special place and one which we can all be tremendously proud of. The Stables would not be here today were it not for the kind support and generosity of local people and grant givers.
We are also heavily reliant on our volunteers, young people staff, Board of Trustees and of course our horses and ponies.
People to choose to support the project in a variety of ways by either donating time, money, gifts or services. All are gratefully received and are essential to our survival however small.
The largest capital grant we have received was £914,000 from The Sports Lottery, Newcastle City Council and the Ouseburn Partnership. This was used to build our state of the art indoor facility.
The Second largest was from The European Regional Development Fund (£405,000) and the Heritage Lottery Grant, (£50,000) which was used to expand our indoor facility and refurbish our existing 19th Century stable block.
The most difficult type of grant to secure is revenue funding which helps pay for your general running costs and overheads. The Stables has only ever had one large grant of this type and this was £199,197. This grant cover the period 2004-2007 and will expire in February. The specific criteria attached to this money was to enable the Stables to address the needs of some of the most disadvantaged youngsters in the City whilst working towards achieving financial self sufficiency. We are well on the way to achieving our goals! In addition to theses larger grants there have been numerous smaller, but equally important ones.
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Thank you for your support.
