He was on his way with his wife Emma to look at another horse when he saw he saw Sprite out on the marshes near Beccles.

“She was in her winter coat and covered in mud,” he recalled. “But when I saw her I said, ‘That’s the one for me, she’s a champion’.”

His instinct for Sprite’s potential paid off at the East of England showground at Peterborough when Sprite, or more formally Oakleys Miss Marble, became the champion spotted horse of Great Britain.

Sprite’s dam was an appaloosa and her sire an Irish draught horse, which explains her brown coat marbled with black spots – “a bit like a tortoiseshell cat,” said Emma – and accounts for part of her name. The Oakleys part comes from the fact that Mr and Mrs Matthews live at Brome, near Oakley.

Sprite’s unpromising beginnings meant she was a difficult horse to break in, and had to be cured of a head-butting habit, said Mrs Matthews. “But now she is a lovely horse and fantastic with our children.”

Sprite, who is stabled at the GWC Equine Centre at Wingfield, is one of seven horses which Mrs Matthews and her landscape gardener husband keep.

Two were rescued by her last year – and she admits that ill-treatment of horses is something of a hot subject for her.

Sprite’s success, when the five-year-old beat seven other horses to the championship, including last year’s winner, was her biggest success so far and next summer she will be competing on the county show circuit in riding horse and dressage classes.