Welcome to the Foxhams Stud website.

Imogen Mary Collier and the Foxhams Stud

Foxhams – Front driveway – room to left of entrance is gun room

Imogen Mary Collier, known by the family as Dena, was born in 1873, she lived her life in the family home “Foxhams” built by her father some years before in Horrabridge on the edge of Dartmoor. Her early life was influenced by her proximity to the moor and its ponies. One of her first requests as a child was to ask for a pony and she soon began to express her later artistic talents by cutting out little pictures of ponies and drawing in a background. This was encouraged as the family included painters of note, one of her uncles was A.B. Collier a well known West Country artist and another The Honourable John Collier, a painter and writer on art. Further her mother’s friend was Lady Elizabeth Butler, (painter of Scotland for Ever and other well known paintings), so surrounded as she was by artists and horses it is not surprising that her life followed a certain course.

Dena’s mother Sophy was known to drive a trap, of unspecified type, with some skill and speed around the local district and the stud at Foxhams was thought to have come into being in 1888 when Dena was about fifteen. Hunting was a great part of Dena’s life in the late ‘80’s and early ‘90’s. She was to be found with Mr. Hodge’s Harriers, Mr. Sperling’s Harriers or the Dartmoor Hounds, often making it to the very end, once her neatly pinned, waist long hair became undone and flew above, in front and behind, only her hat keeping it in place.

Later she attended Frank Calderon’s London School of Animal Painting, spent some time in Paris and journeyed to Egypt and India, leaving paintings of camels as well as ponies, to be enjoyed.

As polo was growing in popularity so Dena began to know people who played the game and became interested in how best to train ponies with the abilities needed to play the game. In this she was successful because she was soon buying ponies, training them and selling them to players. Her artistic talents were in demand too, as she had commissions to paint polo ponies, sometimes with their riders up.

All this activity was brought abruptly to an end when the Great War broke out. In 1914 all, ‘her stock’ was taken, fortunately one or two ponies were considered too highly strung for the army and were allowed to stay for breeding purposes. However all this and general restrictions brought about by the war, necessitated a change of direction. Dena now considered buying a thoroughbred stallion and breeding her own ponies. She bought the thoroughbred stallion Arthur’s Pride and the mare Old Love, and a very propitious decision this turned out to be because in 1917 she bred the mare New Love and in 1918 she bred her stallion Love Song, who was to become the centre of Foxhams Stud until 1938 when he died aged twenty.

During this time Dena had met and married in 1916 Joseph Oscar Muntz, who was very interested in the improvement of stock be they polo ponies or black pigs. Sadly he was killed in 1918 and Dena carried on the stud at Foxhams, but after the war polo was in a parlous state and although she continued to breed polo ponies, by the 1930’s she graduated towards riding ponies and the new phenomenon, children’s ponies. Again she was very successful in this field.

Mrs Oscar Muntz had been involved in one way or another with the Dartmoor Pony Society and the National Pony Society for many years and indeed in 1934 she was elected, as one of the first two ladies on to the Council of The National Pony Society.

When Love Song died in 1938 she decided to sell most of her stud, keeping a few of the older mares for sentimental reasons.
Imogen Mary Collier died in 1952.

Boating Song & Mrs J. Oscar Muntz, Clungford