Wave riders of the West Norfolk
The hunt returned to Hunstanton estate last season for an exhilarating morning’s autumn hunting – and, perhaps, to make history
It was 4.30am on a chilly September morning and I was driving through deepest, darkest Norfolk. A full moon lingered with startling brightness on the western horizon. It was an hour until sunrise and nocturnal life was still in full flow; a barn owl glided across the lane in front of me and a fox slipped into a roadside hedge.
Accompanying me on this early morning drive was Ted Newton, chairman of the West Norfolk Hunt Club. A few weeks earlier, he had extended an invitation to The Field, on behalf of the West Norfolk’s Joint Masters, to join them for a morning’s autumn hunting at Hall Farm, Ringstead, on the Hunstanton estate, and that was our destination now.
Although autumn hunting is a lowkey affair, dedicated to the training of the hounds and the fitness of horses, there is nevertheless something glorious about it. Maybe it is the chance to watch hounds work as the sun rises, or the opportunity to catch up with old friends, or the anticipation of the upcoming season that gets us out of our beds and onto our horses at unearthly hours. Today, however, there was an extra draw: the opportunity to take part in history. “We think that the earliest written records of foxhunting in the UK are from the Hunstanton estate in the 16th century. For one reason or other we haven’t hunted here for decades, so this is a very special morning for us,” Newton explained.
sir thomas le strange
Now few people, myself included, would think of Norfolk as the cradle of fox-hunting; it is, after all, a shooting county. My thinking changed, however, after reading Vic Brown’s impressive tome, The Foxhunters of Norfolk. As its name suggests, Brown’s book charts the lives of prominent Norfolk hunting characters from the mid-16th century to the present day. Each life is described in extraordinary detail but, for me, the one character who really stood out, and the one who brought me to the north Norfolk coast on this September morning, was Sir Thomas Le Strange.
Around 500 years ago, Le Strange owned the Hunstanton estate, which had been in his family’s hands since the time of King John. Like many of his fellow landowners, he kept a pack of hounds to hunt deer. He also kept detailed expense accounts, which have survived, and these record the various items of expenditure relating to his pack. There is nothing extraordinary about this, until you come to two entries, from 1534 and 1538, recording the purchase of “foxe nets”. Although it is not certain what these were