Meet Jacob the Dray Horse

A sculpture of Jacob the Dray Horse stands in The Circle, Queen Elizabeth Street, SE1, in memory of the hundreds of Dray Horses who were stabled there when the site was home to the Courage Brewery.


The horses were responsible for pulling cartloads of beer around London in order to quench the thirst of hungry workers, and even before that the area had been known as a place where horses would rest before entering the City. For this reason it was given the name Horselydown in the Sixteenth Century.

Today, Jacob is the only horse to remain and he isn't even real. He was commissioned by the Jacobs Island Company and Farlane Properties as part of the redevelopment of the area and was flown in by helicopter in 1987.

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