Henrietta Fiddian-Green organises animals in a bonanza nativity play, which draws thousands to the Surrey Hills, as she explains to Martha Terry
For nine days before Christmas we run nativity plays in a barn, set up like Jesus’s stable, on the Wintershall estate in Surrey. It’s spectacular, starting with flares leading up the hill from the car park, and Mary and Joseph appearing on a donkey, the three kings on horseback. There’s sometimes a cow with a calf, lambs in the audience and chickens, too. People can touch and smell the stable scene; it’s real and dramatic.
My mother, Ann Hutley, was inspired by a trip to a shrine in Medugorje, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, 35 years ago to do something with the Christian message for this country, and she decided on a nativity play. My parents started with a donkey and a few hay bales in a barn and it’s gradually grown. Now, there’s a cast of 60, and it’s always a sell-out with 600 people at each show.
My sister, Charlotte de Klee, is now the producer, while I manage the animals. We have three donkeys which I practise leading along the route in the dark because the performances are at 7.30pm. Chester’s an old favourite, he’s been doing this job for nearly 20 years, though we are training up a younger one.
Martha is an experienced journalist who is mad-keen on horses and dogs. Her reporting CV includes the Paris Olympics, European championships, Aachen World Equestrian Festival and World Cup finals. After growing up with assorted liver and white springer spaniels, she enjoyed 14 years with two rescue dogs. Now, her constant companion is Fidget, an extremely energetic and habitually muddy black and white springer. Martha has written on topics as diverse as a top horse’s clone to the best GPS trackers for dogs, as well as equestrian and rural matters for Country Life, The Field, The Times, The Spectator and The Telegraph alongside Horse & Hound.
