Week 2 · English Practice Paper

Reading Passage

King of Fenbrook Hall

Orion knew nothing of racehorses, or he would have understood that trouble was coming — not just for him, but for every strong, fast horse from Kettlewell to the coast. Because a new railway line had opened nearby, and with it had come dozens of men eager to buy horses cheaply and sell them on for racing, for hauling, for anything that paid.

Orion lived at Fenbrook Hall, in the rolling green country beyond the village. Colonel Ashworth's estate, it was called. It sat back from the lane behind iron gates, glimpsed through avenues of chestnut trees that turned the driveway gold every autumn. The house itself was grand, but the stables behind it were grander still in Orion's eyes: a long, cobbled yard with a dozen loose boxes, a tack room that smelled of leather and beeswax, and a paddock that ran all the way down to the river.

Over this whole domain, Orion reigned. He had been born here six years before, and here he had lived every day since. There were other horses, of course — there had to be, on an estate this size — but they did not signify. Pepper, the fat little pony who pulled the trap for market days, lived in the box nearest the gate and rarely put a hoof outside it. The two carriage horses, Duke and Marchioness, were placid, biddable creatures who did as they were told and expected nothing more from life. Orion paid them no attention whatsoever.

Orion belonged to neither the working horses nor the ornamental ones. The whole yard was his. He carried the Colonel's daughters, Beatrice and Nell, on long rides through the woods; he waited at the fence for the stable boys each morning, ears pricked, hooves stamping with impatience; on hunting mornings he stood taller than any other horse in the yard, coat gleaming, while the grooms fussed and brushed and the hounds bayed somewhere beyond the hedge.

For six years he had lived like a young lord of the estate, and it had made him proud. But he had never let himself grow soft. The long gallops across the water meadows and the cold plunges into the river on hot afternoons had kept every muscle hard beneath his coat, and to him, freedom had always tasted sweeter than any bucket of oats.

Option 1: Continue the passage, writing about what happens to Orion next.

• Think about the warning given in the first paragraph — what might it mean for Orion?
• Keep Orion's proud, energetic character consistent with how he has been described so far.

Option 2: Write a descriptive passage entitled: 'The Last Free Morning'

• You may use any setting or characters you like — it does not need to connect to the passage above.
• Focus on building a vivid single scene rather than a long, event-packed story.