Text 1: Second chances at Fallowfield Farm, by Joanne Bolsover

An original contemporary magazine feature.

When Bramble arrived at Fallowfield Farm last March, you could count every one of her ribs from across the yard. The grey mare had been found tethered on a verge beside a dual carriageway with no water, her hooves so overgrown that they curled up at the toe like Turkish slippers.

Fallowfield is a sanctuary run by Liz Garroway and a team of twenty volunteers on forty acres of Herefordshire grazing. It currently cares for thirty-one horses and ponies, most of them rescued from neglect, some simply too old to be ridden. Each new arrival spends two weeks in a quarantine paddock, is seen by the vet and the farrier, and is fed little and often, because a starving horse given too much at once can become seriously ill.

‘People think it’s all cuddles,’ Liz told me, mucking out in the rain. ‘It’s mostly hay bills.’ The sanctuary spends around £6,000 a month, raised almost entirely from donations.

Bramble is unrecognisable now: round, glossy and nosy, she trots to the gate whenever anyone approaches. In the autumn she will be rehomed with a family who have already visited her four times. The oldest residents, like 34-year-old Duke, will never leave. ‘He worked hard all his life,’ says Liz. ‘He’s earned his retirement.’

Text 2: The Michaelmas horse fair, by A Correspondent

An original newspaper report written in a nineteenth-century voice; a period simulation, not an archival document.

In this newspaper report from 1859, a journalist describes the annual horse fair in a market town.

The annual horse fair was held on Tuesday in the High Street, which for the whole of the day was given up entirely to the dealers and their animals, to the great inconvenience of every other person in the town.

Many good horses changed hands, and a pair of carriage horses was sold for ninety guineas. But the greater part of the beasts offered were of a very different stamp. We observed a great many poor, worn-out creatures, lame and broken-winded, whose owners had employed every trick of the trade to disguise their age. Grey hairs about the muzzle had been blacked, and we were told that a piece of ginger is commonly applied to make a dull animal carry its tail high and appear lively.

To show off the paces of a horse, a lad would run it up and down the street at the end of a halter while a man followed behind cracking a whip, and if the poor beast stumbled, as many did, it received a cut across the legs for its pains. One unhappy pony stood the whole day without food or water, tied to a lamp-post.

We are glad to say that not every dealer was so hard. An old farmer from the hills would not allow a stick to be raised to his mare, and walked her up and down himself, talking to her the whole time. He got his price.

Using information from both texts, explain briefly how the horses were treated.

You should make it clear which text you are referring to.