© Hereford Traditional Cattle Breeders Club Maintained by Local PC Care
The History of the Hereford Breed
In the first Herd Book to record female, volume 3, there are several breeders who
have registered females that became significant through the passage of time. The
first of these was John Hewer. Born at the Great Hardwick farm, near Abergavenny,
John inherited much of his father, William's, work of the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth century. The Hewers' have to take most of the credit for the pre-
With Hewer were several others. Most notable of these would be Ben Rogers, who like Hewer produced bulls for the hire market, as well as for sale. Rogers started his farming life in Radnorshire and moved to the Grove at Pembride just after the first Herd Book had been published. His significance is that in about a twenty year period he registered and sold more than three hundred bulls for breeding by others. The Turner family also bred Hereford cattle before the introduction of the early Herd Books and it was Philip Turner junior, of Aymestry Court and subsequently of the Leen, who registered most of the tribes that became famous. Only one of the original tribes from Aymestry still survive today in the female tribes, but others are represented in the AI bulls lines. William Tudge again started in Radnorshire and moved down onto better ground, this time in South Shropshire, finally ending his days at Adforton. The Rae family were another of those breeders that started their farming in Radnorshire and moved eastward to Herefordshire. Again their influence in this early Herd Book is significant.
The period after these early Herd Book breeders was taken up more by the show men of the nineteenth century. Men like George Pitt, John Price of the Court House Pembridge, Arthur Turner, son of Philip, Thomas Carwardine, Arthur Edwards Hughes, and John H Arkwright. These men forged a type of animal that took the world by storm. Herefords were exported world wide to the great grassland of the globe, to perform outstandingly against all comers.
The early part of the twentieth century was much quieter than the latter part of the ninteenth century, with the breeders W Griffiths, Alfred Tanner and Stewart Robinson coming to the fore. Two of the breeders of the mid twentieth century were sons of the first two, H R Griffiths and E Craig Tanner respectively, and their herds were to dominate the period between the wars, along with a young man whose background was in Herefordshire, but by misfortune had lost the aid of a family background at an early age, one Percy Bradstock. It was also in this period that some herds were set up with monies made by industrialist in the First War. These herds were short term investments that in general lost more than they gained finacially, but they did focus the best bloodlines of the breed into single herds, and on their break up help improve many of the ordinary breeders herd. Others who established and developed high quality herd during this time included; Newman Brothers, and F J Newman after that at Wickton Court; J W Jones and Sons at Sheephouse, (Atok and Penatok); C L Hewitson and Son at Rowington; W Milner at Wenlock; and probably the man who became the most famous breeder of Herefords after World War II, R de Q Quincey.
