REPUTATION counts. Whether it be a reputation for winning, for breeding, or for selling horses that keep clients coming back again and again.

Grace Maxwell Murphy has a great reputation for all the aforementioned. She has won countless titles in the hunter showing ring as well as in the Connemara classes. Most recently her home-bred seven-year-old Gleann Rua da Vinci was named Supreme Hunter Champion in Dublin.

She has, alongside her husband William McMahon, bred horses and ponies which exude quality and encourage traditional Irish lines. She has watched the demand for animals from her yard grow over the years, with more and more people finding her through the talent of the ones she has sold.

Grace, who works as a solicitor full-time and is mother to two boys, Blake (4) and Henry (2), discusses how it her life with horses began and her passion to keep breeding and producing the best. “It all began with my late mother Beatrice Maxwell Murphy. Her family was from Mullingar and they always had horses,” Grace told The Irish Field.

“She moved down to Galway when she married my father, Dr Ted Murphy; he had a doctor’s practice here. She always wanted a horse and it made more sense geographically to have a Connemara Pony so they went and bought a few Connemaras and that started to breed them.

“In fact the day after I was born my Dad went out to an auction in Lady Hemphill’s Tulira Castle and bought two mares and one ended up being the foundation mare of our whole line. Her name was Tulira Purple Heather.

“The other was a smaller mare called Tulira Blackthorn on whom I won the Clifden ridden championship with when I was 10 years old in 1994. Mummy brought us to shows up and down the country, she was fantastic. She really honed our interest. She knew it was a nice thing to be interested in,” Grace remembers fondly.

“My Mom had a nice stallion named Gleann Rua Maxwell (Westside Fred – Moonlight x Gentian Rebel Tim) and he had a lot of success including RDS and Clifden championship wins. I think she really enjoyed that.”

Grace Murphy and husband William McMahon with their first child, Blake \ Alan Leonard

Buying and selling

“As I got older and went to university, I began to buy and sell ponies myself. But Connemaras had become hugely popular and as a result very expensive and hard to find.

“I ended up sourcing a filly foal, Thiergartenhofs Larissa, online from a stud in Germany and bringing her into Ireland in 2006. She went on to win a Balmoral Championship and the reserve ridden championship in Clifden in 2016, and she is one of my foundation mares.

“Later on I bought a foal in the Clifden Sales named Lakeside Misty. She won in Clifden for me and qualified for the side-saddle in Dublin. I was doing exams that year so I took a foal off her, kept him and sold her.

“He was named Gleann Rua Maximillian and he too won in Clifden with me. I sold him last week just after he had qualified for the Horse of the Year Show.

“Then there were others also. Afro Jack, I bought up in Donegal along with his brother Digweed and they both won in Clifden with me.”

Special mare

One special mare has given Grace and William a lot of joy in recent years. “The same year as I bought the Connemara foal in Germany, I also bought a sport horse mare called Gleann Rua Times, by French Buffet. Her first foal, Gleann Rua Gatsby, was a fine horse by Cappa Casanova who I sold to the Ledburys in England.

“I then bred her to Colin Diamond and she had a big 17.3hh gelding named Gleann Rua Colin who I sold to Florida last year. He’s jumping out there and doing really well.

“Her third foal was Gleann Rua de Vinci who did so well in Dublin and we have just sold him to Jill Day for Robert Walker to ride.

“When I met William we started to buy more horses than ponies. We began to buy three-year-olds initially and we had great success. We had Cappa Ranger who won in Balmoral and was second in Dublin, he went to America.

“The people that bought Ranger then came back and bought another one from us, Cappa Rua Spielberg. Their sales seemed to generate a lot more sales for us in the USA. Since 2019 we have sent a lot of horses out there, and to Canada, most recently a three-year-old Connemara pony called Glanmire Rudi.”

William McMahon and Gleann Rua Da Vinci, winner of Show Hunter championship at the 2022 Dublin Horse Show \ Lorraine O'Sullivan

Quality

Keeping a busy job, two children and many horses going at once is no easy task. “We moved back to Galway full-time when I had my first child in 2018 and I’ve been working remotely since then. We built a new house down here and we just moved in a month ago.

“We made the decision around the time that Covid hit that we were going to start to buy foals and bred more horses ourselves; we were finding it hard to source three-year-olds.

“The prices had gone mad so we began to focus more on getting better stock as foals because we can see the mares they come from and things like that.

“When we go and look at a foal we aren’t looking at them as something which will go up and win Dublin as a four-year-old we are looking at them thinking are you going to be a nice quality horse that will do a job.

“If we can see a job for them then we will buy them; they don’t have to necessarily be a show hunter or a show pony. A lot of our market is the amateur one and you just want a nice horse or pony that will do a job; jump a fence, jump a wall and hunt on a Saturday.

“Last year was our first time selling hunters and we found we could have had 20 or 30 more and sold them all. There was a huge demand for a nice good looking horse that had been out hunting, had been produced well and was riding nicely. That seemed to go a long way.

“When we sold a horse to the UK or Holland, people were contacting us and saying ‘we saw that horse out hunting with such and such and would you have another just like him?’

“The horses seemed to speak for themselves so that was really rewarding for us; that the horses were going out and doing what we said they’d do.

“We currently have a nice bunch of three-year-olds to do all that with again next year. We also have a couple we think may fit the showing bill.

“We also buy thoroughbred foals which we sell as three-year-olds. Last year we sold Doyen For Money and Ukantango in the Tattersalls sales and they are both doing well in the UK.”

Future

“We keep about 10 in work; I’m working full-time and it’s just the two of us so we have to keep the numbers manageable.

“I have a couple of Connemaras that have done very well for me. Glencarraig Princess Ella won two-year-old filly class in Clifden in 2019 and she won this year in Balmoral and another couple of championships, including the ridden in Oughterard last weekend.

“I also have Addrigoole Andre who has done very well for me; he’s won in Clifden twice and Balmoral and went to HOYS last year.

“We do have a lovely grey horse, Gleann Rua Oscar Wilde, who did very well finishing second in Dublin. In all the excitement of Da Vinci winning the Supreme, he didn’t get a look in but he’s a really nice horse.

“Two years ago I brought Da Vinci’s mother, Gleann Rua Times, back to his grandfather (because his father, Camillo, was castrated) and she had a really nice Douglas colt who is now a yearling. She has a colt foal at foot by Crosstown Dancer, and she is in foal to Dignified, so what we have coming up now is very exciting for the future.”

Watch this space.