Drive 2 Survive appeal for help with Appleby stallion sculpture
Drive 2 Survive – a Romany led community interest company – has appealed to Gypsies, Travellers and supporters for help in making the dream of a sculpture that marks the Town’s historic link to the famous annual horse fair come true.
The sculpture will be an iron sculpture of a stallion, which is currently under consideration by West Morland & Furness District Council, who will soon decide on whether to go ahead and give the landmark full planning permission.
With the online planning application already picking up comments – many of them negative – Drive 2 Survive are appealing for Gypsies and Travellers to go online and support the sculpture.
This can be done by following this link to the district council’s planning portal and will take less than two minutes: Planning application: 2025/0264/FPA | Westmorland & Furness Council
Jake Bowers, co-founder of Drive 2 Survive, said that the sculpture is intended to make the contribution of Gypsies and Travellers to Appleby “visible, permanent and celebrated.”
“Working with expert planner Mark Simmonds and with support from Appleby Town Council, Bill Lloyd and Billy Welch and local district councillors and employees, we have identified a place next to the River Eden where we would like to erect the statue as a permanent reminder of the importance of the fair to Gypsy and Traveller culture,” added Jake Bowers, who is also a blacksmith.
“To this end, I took a mobile forge to Appleby Fair in 2023 and 2024 and started the job of making a forged sculpture of the Appleby Stallion, it was completed and galvanised in the autumn of 2024. It is one of 12 sculptures the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust has funded the Drive 2 Survive Community Interest Company to make.”
Read the full story on the Drive 2 Survive website here: A Stallion for Appleby
TT News/Drive 2 Survive press release
(Photograph courtesy of Drive 2 Survive. Caption: The Appleby Stallion waits patiently in Sussex before it is installed in Appleby)