RON CREASEY

  It is with much sadness that I have to announce the death of our good friend and colleague

  Ron Creasey who died Friday (18th April) following a recent bypass operation.

  Ron's Funeral took place on Friday 25th April near his home at BURSTWICK, East Riding

  We will never see a man like Ron again. What a great character with his stories, knowledge of

  horses and good sense of humour. I, like many ,met and spoke to him many times. He will be

  sadly missed by all who knew him and a great loss to the heavy horse world, especially by us at

   the Hertfordshire Heavy Horse Association.

  John Sparks

From the Hull and East Riding Mail 28th April 2008

LAST JOURNEY IS A FITTING TRIBUTE

It was a fitting tribute to a man who dedicated his life to

working with horses.

A Yorkshire yellow wagon, rigged up according to the

Holderness farming tradition, was pulled by four heavy

horses through Burstwick village to All Saints'

Church on Friday for the funeral of 78-year-old Ron Creasey.

The Suffolk Punch horses were brought from a farm in Botany Bay,

Hertfordshire, by Mr Creasey's friend Heather Keeble.

The pair became friends about 25 years ago through their mutual love

of the breed of horses, which were employed to work on farms before the invention of the tractor.

Mr Creasey, who lived in the village, first worked with heavy horses as a ploughman on a number of farms in Holderness during the 1930s and 1940s.

His daughter, Anne Hughes, said the special procession was the perfect tribute to her father.

She said: "This was the most fitting way for him to make his last journey.

"It's the most appropriate journey he could ever have wished for.

"Dad was one of the last people in this area to work with heavy horses, before tractors came along, so it is like a piece of history is dying with him."

Mr Creasey was born in Hull in 1929 and moved to Sproatley when he was about 11 years old as an evacuee during the Second World War.

It was in Sproatley that he began working with heavy horses and developed his admiration for them.

He moved to Suffolk in about 1963 and met people in the area who were still using heavy horses on farms as a hobby.

He went on to manage a farm in Sussex and worked for the National Trust at Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire, where heavy horses were used to give wagon rides, before returning to East Yorkshire when he retired in 2004.

Mrs Hughes said: "Dad continued to farm with horses after tractors came along, because he found they could do a lot more farming jobs than tractors could do.

"For instance, they could get into places tractors couldn't go and they didn't get stuck."

He is survived by his 80-year-old wife Nancy.

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