The 'club’ is the Ebony Horse Club, Britain’s most unusual riding school: the only one in the country to operate all year round without either horses or stables of its own. In the 14 years that the club has been ferrying disadvantaged children, aged eight to 18, to stables all over London, there have been triumphs – two members have gone to the British Racing School to train as jockeys – and also tragedy, when the club’s star rider was murdered. But, if the last pieces of a £1.75 million funding jigsaw fall into place, by next year Ebony should have stables of its own.  Those stables, the first to be built in inner London for decades, will be in Wyck Gardens, a two-acre strip of unloved land sandwiched between tower blocks and a railway line just off Coldharbour Lane in Brixton. Coldharbour ward is one of the poorest in Lambeth, the fifth most deprived borough in the country. Here, children can grow up never seeing the countryside, let alone having the opportunity to race across open spaces on horseback. But Ros Spearing, the 50-year-old former television researcher who started the riding club in 1996, does not see why that joyous experience should be the preserve of the children of well-off parents. So, on a Tuesday evening after school, Spearing is standing on a street corner next to the 'gardens’ with a dozen excited nine-, 10- and 11-year-olds, waiting for a minibus to take them on the 45-minute drive to Willowtree stables in Lewisham for a riding lesson.  The children come to Ebony through referrals from schools, police and social workers, or by word of mouth. Looking down the list of 50 children currently receiving four riding lessons per term, Spearing notes those who are their parents’ carers, others who are in local authority care, four children with autism. Several, like Junior, have behavioural difficulties. Many have multiple family problems: debt, depression, cramped living conditions, siblings in prison. 'Often it takes several years before the children talk about their lives. With one pair of girls I always knew something was wrong, but they had been coming for four years before their mother appeared, stinking of alcohol.’  Riding lessons are provided free for children with parents on benefits; the rest pay only £10 a term membership. The remainder of the £100,000 a year it costs to run Ebony comes from a mixture of sources: charitable trusts, individual donors and fundraising activities (Ebony had a runner in the London marathon), all of which Spearing managed almost single-handedly, until this year.  On the way to Lewisham, Spearing – herself a single parent with a 12-year-old daughter – stops off to collect a vast bag of boots. One of her principles is that all children should start a ride feeling equal. If they don’t have socks, she will provide;  if they have not eaten, she will find them food. During the drive the children are noisy, boasting about the 'stallions’ they will ride. As soon as they arrive at the stables, they calm down. One girl, who is having her first lesson, objects to removing her hair ornaments in order to wear a helmet, but Spearing is firm: 'You cannot have the hat sitting on top of your head like a fruit.’ The girl gives in.  Willowtree’s riding instructor, Jan Massey, makes no concessions for background: proper, responsible behaviour is required. 'You have to think of the horse, not yourself,’ Massey says. 'No horse should have to put up with being punched in the stomach.’ When a boy continues kicking, she is severe: 'You have been told not to do that. You are not being  a friend to your horse.’ The reprimanded boy wipes tears from his eyes. She ignores him. 'Now walk on.’ By the end of the lesson all the children are composed, orderly and longing to return for their next fortnightly lesson.  Later that week, several of the children come with their parents to the Brixton community centre that currently houses Ebony’s office to discuss the club. Nine-year-old Samuel Atkinson’s eyes shine as he talks about his experiences on Emily and Sovereign. He has been riding for nearly a year and says, with passion, 'I dream of riding my horse in the street.’ His mother, Hannah Abiri, a single parent who has retrained in fashion since being made redundant five years ago, is delighted that Sam is absorbed by a healthy outdoor activity.  'I pray that he doesn’t get involved in gangs, but it’s difficult in this area,’ she says. 'He’s always happy when he goes to Ebony.’  Ten-year-old Charlie Pritchard has been riding for a year longer than Sam. He has progressed to the second of five groups which take the children through from walking on a leading-rein to being independent riders, able to canter and jump. Charlie has had a difficult year: his mother had to leave both her home and job to care for her dying father, so Charlie’s father stopped work to care for the family. Everyone in the room laughs when he ends an enthusiastic speech about riding by saying, 'I love mucking out.’ At the Household Cavalry, on an Ebony visit, he had watched soldiers caring for horses; it inspired him.  Lessons in horse care (grooming, mucking out, putting poultices on sore legs) are part of the Ebony package. In addition to riding lessons, each member also gets two excursions at weekends. Some of the visits are horse-themed, perhaps to Badminton Horse Trials or showjumping at Hickstead; others are purely educational.  The high spot of the Ebony year is a trip to the Brecon Beacons, funded by the Worshipful Company of Loriners (a guild that used to make the metal parts of a horse’s tack). This spell in the country is a goal worth striving – and behaving – for. 'Many of these children have never left London,’ Spearing says. 'I’ve been asked, “Have we arrived?” when we’ve driven past Windsor Castle.’  Domenico Hemming, 10, who went on this Easter’s trip, was amazed to ride on Welsh hillsides. 'I thought it would be like riding in a ring in London,’ he told his mother, Natalia, who suffers from such severe epilepsy that she often can’t leave home. Much of his childhood has been spent with his grandmother, who now has terminal cancer. 'That’s been very hard for him, as they are so close,’ Natalia says. 'Before Domenico started in the horse club last year, he was having problems at school;  I think he felt isolated. Since he’s been riding, I’ve seen a change in his temperament. Horses are powerful, but calming too. Riding has given him a non-verbal outlet for his feelings. It’s a physical activity, which makes him feel in control but, unlike combat sports, is based on intuition and caring.’  Spearing understands what horses mean to the Ebony children because she was once a horse-obsessed city child herself. Her parents could not provide riding lessons when she was growing up in Hammersmith, west London, but she used to visit great-aunts in the country. When she was three, one of their neighbours passed by on a horse and asked if she would like to get up. 'I was too scared but, from that moment, I wanted my own horse.’  After studying geography at the University of Birmingham, she spent her wages on riding lessons in Hyde Park, first one a week, then five lessons. Eventually, in 1991, she scraped together £900 to buy her own horse, Hugo, a seven-year-old crossbreed whose naughtiness was 'causing chaos at a city farm’. At the time, she was living on the Moorlands estate in Brixton, and working as a freelance researcher on television documentaries about social issues such as drug trafficking, poverty and youth crime for the BBC and Channel 4. She kept Hugo in stables in Kennington, a mile or so away, and competed in horse shows at weekends. (Hugo is now 27 and has retired to Orping­ton in Kent.) The fulfilment she found in riding gave Spearing an idea.  'The local youth club on the estate, the Accra, provided classes for kids in things like football and street dancing,’ she says. 'Why not a horse section? Children need two or three things to keep them busy so they won’t get involved in crime. Riding could be part of a patchwork. From the start, I gave priority to those children who were disrupting other activities because they were living in an urban environment where they didn’t have enough to do.’  Spearing sees involvement in horses as an ideal way to both keep busy, and learn important life lessons. 'To get the best out of horses, the children have to learn to treat them in a calm and considerate manner,’ she says. 'In return, they can get a unique confidence boost. A horse doesn’t care if a child is excluded or overweight, or from a poor family. As long as you treat a horse with respect, it will respect you.’  In the early days, whenever she could raise the money, she would take a few children to stables in Wormwood Scrubs in west London for a 30-minute lesson. By 2002 the riding had become so popular that being part of a youth club was holding her back, so Spearing set up the Ebony Horse Club as an independent charity, employing youth workers and drivers to take the children to lessons. Each year since, Ebony has grown by 50 per cent.  So many children now want to join that, after a taster lesson, hopefuls stay on a waiting list for more than a year. 'It’s a shame they have to wait so long. I like to get them involved with horses when they are eight or nine, before they start getting into trouble, because this is a slow process, not an instant solution. A child is like a glass: you have to keep putting good things in, and keep pouring. Just when you think it will never work, it tips in your favour. Very few of our members have got into trouble, and we’ve had some great successes.’  Twenty-year-old Tanya Whyte is one of those whose life was changed by Ebony. She started riding with the club aged eight, when her family was living in a council maisonette where drug dealers and prostitutes operated right outside the door.  'I was very shy, really humble then,’ Whyte says. 'Riding really helped me learn to communicate with other children.’  Spearing describes Whyte as a girl who, for the first few years at Ebony, did not say a word; she has blossomed into a confident student, about to embark on a degree in marketing. Tanya still comes to Ebony once a week to help the younger children ride. 'They start off disrespectful,’ she says. 'But soon they learn to be disciplined. Horses are unpredictable. The kids have to stop being loud, and listen.’  To meet demand, Spearing first began planning Ebony’s own stables in 2003. By 2007 she had planning permission, an architect’s model of the stables, and an agreement to lease the land from Lambeth Council for a peppercorn rent. All that remained was to raise £1.75 million to build stabling for eight horses, a riding school and a classroom where 30 children can learn about horse care. Instead of providing 50 hour-long lessons a fortnight, she would be able to provide 160 lessons a week. Fundraising was going well when, in August 2007, disaster struck.  Eighteen-year-old Nathan Foster was one of the club’s leading lights. Ten years previously, when he joined Ebony, he had been a withdrawn boy, often unfairly blamed for trouble locally. Through riding he had developed into not only a fine horseman, but also a youth worker whose quiet assurance held great sway with younger boys. He died on August 3 after being shot in the centre of Brixton – mistaken for a youth who had taken another young man’s gold chain.  Six hundred people turned out for Foster’s funeral. The following month, Ebony’s annual award ceremony, where politeness and punctuality are honoured alongside riding prowess, became a memorial to him. Photographs of Nathan still adorn the club’s offices, and when speaking of his death Spearing loses her habitual exuberance. It was, she says, 'the low point’ in the club’s history. In the months that followed, a dozen further shootings shook the area; territorial gang disputes became so bad that Ebony members were not safe walking to catch the minibus to riding lessons.  Three weeks after his death, while Spearing struggled to support Nathan’s family and traumatised club members, plans for the new stables foundered. An application for lottery funding was turned down on a technicality: she had failed to mention the benefits the riding centre would bring to the whole community, as well as the young riders. 'The people who live nearby really want it,’ she says. 'But after Nathan’s death I didn’t have the heart to fight. For about a year we lost the thread.’  But in spring 2008, just when Spearing was at her lowest ebb, the project received a boost from an unexpected quarter. The Duchess of Cornwall’s office rang to say that she had learnt of the club and wished to attend the annual award ceremony that September. 'The Duchess’s every minute was mapped out,’ Spearing recalls. 'But she diverted from her programme, went into the crowd, to find Nathan’s mother and sister, and other bereaved families.’  Last spring the Duchess, who is the patron of the British Equestrian Federation, became the president of Ebony Riding Club. 'Her Royal Highness believes that the organisation does a fantastic job in improving access to outdoor activities for inner-city children,’ her spokesman says, 'and in helping them to learn important skills that can be transferred into other areas of their lives.’  From then on, things started to go right. Last July Ebony won a £60,000 award from the global organisation Beyond Sport. In December the British Equestrian Federation announced a £200,000 grant towards the stables through Hoof, the Olympic legacy project. The Walcott Found­ation then agreed to pay a fundraiser for two years to find the rest of the money. In March the Tudor Trust pledged £200,000; other grant-giving bodies are expected to commit soon. The final £350,000 of the £1.75 million has yet to be found, as well as the £200,000-a-year running costs, but Spearing is 'optimistic’.  If that money is found this summer, by autumn 2011 children will be cantering around the wasteland that is currently home to only a bin marked sharps for junkies’ discarded needles. 'Here will be the paddock, and here the open-air school,’ Spearing says, striding around the site. In running the stables she will be assisted by a full-time instructor, a stable manager, and, of course, many young volunteers. Wyck Gardens will become a magnet for youth, not a wasteland. 'I can’t wait,’ says Shanice Reid who, along with her siblings, will be able to spend every spare minute in horse heaven.
An equestrian club without horses or stables of its own that for 14 years has    given a leg-up to deprived inner-city children is entering the final    straight in its race to build a home and secure its future.