The ex-JFS pupil who became the postergirl for equine luxury

Clara Fingerhut had a regular Jewish upbringing. She lived in Edgware, went to JFS and had her bat mitzvah at Southgate Progressive Synagogue.

Then, aged 12, her life changed. She bought a pony with her bat mitzvah money and her “obsession” with horses – which began with her first ride a year earlier – took off at a canter.

Today, she is not only the proud owner of a huge stable yard in Brittany but she has also become something of an equestrian design icon.

Having moved to France in December 2021, she discovered she could not afford £20,000 for the four stables she had planned inside a barn. So she decided to make them herself – out of old pallets.

The result, which has been the subject of articles in Horse and Hound magazine in the UK and Cheval Magazine in France, has a beautiful, “shabby-chic” quality. 

“It may not have been my original dream to have stables built out of pallets, but I’m very happy with how they’ve turned out,” she tells the JC. 

"They turned out to be quite a work of art. This is better than what I originally wanted – I’ve built them myself, they’re something I can be proud of, and they’re beautiful.”

Although she had always loved animals and the outdoors, her family never had a pet at home because her brother was asthmatic. Shortly after her bat mitzvah, she bought her first pony, Tallulah, for £700.

“I don’t know if it’s a love or an addiction,” she says. “It’s been a way of life since I was 12. I can’t imagine a life without horses.”

While the Israeli-American showjumper Danielle Goldstein-Waldman comes to mind, and successful Jewish jockeys have included Walter Blum (who died in March), Clara says “Jews and horses don’t tend to mix that much”.

She was certainly the only one in her class at JFS with this passion. “Everyone at school knew Clara because she had a horse,” she says.

After running a dog-walking and boarding business in Hertfordshire, Fingerhut decided three years ago to move to Brittany, in France, where she had spent her family holidays as a child. Intending to recreate her dog-boarding business and to open her own livery, caring for a few clients’ horses as well as her own two, she set out to find an equestrian home where she could have four luxury stables built.

“I’ve always been a country girl at heart, and I’d never be able to afford the property I wanted, or even anything in England.”

However, when she arrived at her new site, she discovered that with everything else that needed building, she could not afford £20,000 for the four stables she had planned inside a barn. So she decided to make them herself.

As it was coming into winter and Tallulah urgently needed the comfort of a stable, Clara was desperate to get the stables finished before it turned too cold.

“I thought I could just make something temporary just so my horses could live in it, and then I’d get my dream stables a bit later.”

Given that her only DIY experience to this date was applying the odd lick of paint and putting up a couple of shelves, when she set to work on dismantling pallets to build her stables from scratch, it was harder work than she had anticipated. Dismantling her first pallet took two-and-a-half hours. “I’d never dismantled one before, and it’s a really difficult thing to do. Often the planks just break.”

She acquired the pallets from a landscape gardener and other local workers, as well as a DIY store, and steadily worked her way through dismantling more than 200 of them.

When she finished building her stables from this timber, she realised that they did not need to be temporary.

While she was “determined” to make the stables happen, others had doubts. When a landscape designer surveyed the completed stables, he told Clara: “I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t believe in your project at all.”

“He was quite pleasantly surprised,” says Fingerhut, who has also since built a homely, rustic tack room for storing and maintaining riding equipment.

Her horses were also happy with their new home, particularly Tallulah, who is now 29 years old. “The last stable she was in was absolutely tiny.

"Knowing that I didn’t have a huge amount of land to put loads of horses on, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got this big barn, I’m going to make some big stables in there.’

She’s now got a huge stable, and she went straight in and had a nice roll in her big bed.” Clara is thrilled to be beginning her dream career offering “a VIP service for horses” in Brittany.

“It’s always been my dream to have my own land and stables.

"If you want something badly enough, you might not necessarily know how it’s going to come about, but you know it will happen.

"I just took the bull by the horns and made the decision to move to a different country. I’m a dreamer and an optimist.”