Where did Thorncroft's logo, the Chicken and the Horse come from?

Thorncroft's logo is of an Old English Game Chicken, sitting on the rump of a bay Thoroughbred hunter champion. In the 1960's a friend of Thorncroft, Barb Wilson, came to visit Saunders Dixon. Together they started "doodling"... and from those doodles came... the Thorncroft logo you see today!

The chicken is an Old English Game Bird (from Australia), the horse is Bond Street, a hunter champion of his generation. The game birds have been a part of the Dixon family since the early 1900's. The original Thorncroft Farm was in what is now Suburban Square, Ardmore, PA. The farm was owned by Saunders Dixon's grand father Edwin Saunders Dixon, Sr. At his death, his son Edwin Saunders Dixon, Jr sold the farm in Suburban Square and moved to what we now know as Thorncroft, in Malvern, PA., where his son Saunders the III was born.

Bond Street was Show Hunter Champion on the East coast in 1940's. The late Mrs. Hope Montgomery Scott of Ardrossan Farm in Ithan, PA showed him successfully at Madison Square Garden, The Devon horse Show and The Bryn Mawr Horse Show, just to name a few!

Saunders grew up in Malvern with his father and mother Anna Florence Woodruff. His Quaker upbringing, his love of the farm, the animals and people that surrounded the Farm in those early years are the foundations of the Thorncroft we all know today. If you come to visit Thorncroft today, you will find yourself in a little piece of heaven - where all people regardless of their abilities are welcomed with love and respect. Where you can wander through our barn full of horses and ponies, and watch an Old English Game Bird... crowing on the fence line.