Mr Almeroth-Williams is particularly good on the droving of cattle and sheep from Scotland and Wales to London’s Smithfield Market, but this led me to consider what kind of droving had happened to the South of the river Thames, something that is much harder to find out, though there is a quite well-known drove road in the Tolworth area. The Old Kent Road has a Vietnamese restaurant that is in an old established pub called the Kentish Drovers. On the north side of Kennington Lane in Greenwood’s 1826 map https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/ids:8982548 there is a “Cattle Yard” indicated, and in Horwood’s 1819 revision by Faden — https://www.romanticlondon.org/the-1819-plan/#18/51.49159/-0.10572 — the same place is marked as “Cattle Penns”. As there were few grazing fields left in this area of London near the Elephant and Castle, presumably these were holding pens for cattle being driven up to market. Clapham Road and Kennington Park Road have Georgian houses widely spaced opposite each other, and there was a toll booth by St Mark’s Church at the Oval. I have to envision a tightly packed herd of animals being walked up to London as far as Newington Butts and kept there for the night before being walked over a bridge to Smithfields.

Agasse was well-known and respected for his horse sense among London’s dealers, grooms and equestrians. I’m not aware of any evidence that Agasse ever travelled to Ireland. He moved permanently to London in 1800 and lived there until his death in 1849.

I think it’s fair to say that Agasse made the Smithfield horse trade look a little more respectable than it actually was. By the late 18th century, it had a pretty bad reputation for criminality, raucous behaviour and cruelty. Agasse depicts a fine dray horse and some elegant riding horses but no knackers despite there being a thriving trade in them.