‘Good old hunting days’ Capt Ian Farquhar reminisces

Capt Ian Farquhar reminisces about ‘the good old days’ and how easy it is for old practices to be forgotten

RECENTLY, a group of masters and huntsmen were gathered together having a drink, chewing the cud and reminiscing about long hunts in times past.

One young master asked: “When you used to run regularly into your neighbour’s hunting country, were there any rules — or were you just poaching?”

Thinking about that remark brought home to me how much had changed, and how easy it is for old practices to be forgotten. The answer, of course, is simple. Pre-ban, there were rules as laid out in the Masters of Foxhounds Association’s Constitution of

Rules and Recommendations that dealt with the question of running into a neighbour’s country, which were perfectly coherent and based on logic.

Firstly, as an overriding principle, the fox could only be hunted in its wild and natural state, and that, as regards boundaries, a fox could be hunted over a hunt’s border with the strict premise that if it was accounted for, marked to ground or lost, the pack pulled up stumps and returned to their own country without any question of bolting the fox or drawing again in the neighbouring country. On occasions, especially in sheep farming countries, with the permission of the masters and by request of the farmer, it was deemed to be legitimate to dispatch the fox.

‘WE ARE OVER THE BORDER!’

IT should all be straightforward, but nothing about hunting and neighbourly relations has ever been thus.

This was made clear to me when, as a rather young and inexperienced huntsman in the Bicester country, we found a fox at Cropredy Lawn — the home of the Webber family of racing fame — and we found ourselves crossing the Banbury road into the Warwickshire country.

John Webber, on his old grey horse, rode up alongside me and, with a grin, said, “Kick on boy, we are over the border, damage is now for free!”

A little disingenuous, I thought, but he was a farmer and we were now on his neighbour’s land...

Another incident shortly followed, which illustrated that it was not all plain sailing. A charming couple who farmed below the Quainton Hills near the Whaddon boundary, who walked puppies and were great supporters of the Bicester, rang up one morning. They asked me to put my foot down about Albert Buckle, the Whaddon huntsman, consistently encroaching across their grass farm from Christmas Gorse, with little reason but with a large field behind him to get to the Quainton Hills, where they would normally find.

The Whaddon’s Dorian Williams, a senior master in those days, told me not to be so difficult. Only a chat to their long-serving hunt secretary, Puggy Wyatt, partially resolved the issue. It was purely as one spent more time in those days chatting to other huntsmen that one realised excursions into adjacent countries were not only inevitable if one had a good pack of hounds, but were considered part of the rich tapestry of things.

As the Bicester had a long, thin north end of the country, with a prevailing west wind, we on occasions spent as much time in the Grafton country as our own. I remember one memorable day when we had two five-mile points, followed by a six-mile point, all into the Grafton, and being seriously reprimanded by their joint-master Capt Hawkins while boxing up deep into their country in the dark.

When he was hunting the Grafton, Alastair Jackson was constantly philosophical about it. He always remembered that when he was hunting the South Dorset in their fairly small vale, he would finish up in the Blackmore Vale country practically every day and to such a degree that, one day, he was admonished by the then joint-master and sidekick to the Count de Pelet, Miss Bridget Holmes A’Court: “You are here again — you must be either very rich or very stupid!”

Of course, he was neither.

A HOT LINE INTO THE HEYTHROP

OTHER border skirmishes were legendary. When my cousin Capt Brian Fanshawe was at the North Cotswold, he had a fairly hot line into the Heythrop country, much to the fury of Capt Ronnie Wallace and his joint-master Valerie Willes. They were on a bit of a loser with Fanshawe since his mother was, by then, married to Lord Dulverton, who owned the Batsford estate, of prime importance to the Heythrop.

Not all border clashes were acrimonious, however, and Adrian Dangar recalls the Sinnington and Derwent joining together to repair a bridge over the Costa Beck, so that both could safely run into each other’s terrain.

Martin Scott recalls a memorable hunt into the Dulverton East country while at the Tiverton, and another from Williamstrip to the Heythrop

country at Burford while at the VWH.

Not, I hasten to add, were raids into neighbouring countries the prerogative of amateurs.

Back to my own days, VWH huntsman Sidney Bailey was pretty much guaranteed to finish up at Somerford in the Beaufort country every Wednesday before we were due to meet there on the Thursday.

I have also always loved the remark made by George Cook hunting the Bedale when, after quite a lengthy check, somebody galloped up to him and told him a fox had just crossed the border not too far distant, with the observation that he was not sure it was the hunted fox.

“‘Tis now sir, ‘tis now!” was George’s rejoinder before gathering up his pack and setting off in pursuit.

Frank Houghton Brown was always a great believer that any proper foxhunter was always pleased to see any pack of hounds on whatever day. He was somewhat disappointed by the Morpeth masters’ reaction when he, by chance, ran into theirs from the Tynedale. However, he always strongly sang the praises of the Murray Wells family after he ran on to their estate in the Sinnington country from the Middleton and Hugh Murray Wells came out, cheered him on and shouted, “Go anywhere you want to!”

THE BICESTER AT BLENHEIM

RETURNING to my own experiences, I have to admit that not all forays into neighbouring countries were completely devoid of a little organisation. I always wanted to get over the railway line, main road and canal that formed the western boundary of the Bicester and the Heythrop — not an easy call and seldom achieved.

So, after an uplifting day round Stratton Audley and after a certain amount of celebrating in the Kennels Cottage where we lived, it suddenly dawned on those still there in their hunt clothes — Mrs Farquhar, Heather Tylor (then Budgett), Vince Kilkenny and another mate of his who went by the delightful name of Slim O’Callaghan and

I — that, since it was the night of the Heythrop hunt ball, we ought to give them a proper look at a proper foxhound.

Down to the kennels we went and drew out half a dozen of the woolliest of the doghounds. We all piled into a van and set off for Blenheim, where the ball was being held. Dinner was still in progress and we put the hounds in, but were bounced out on our ears ourselves before we could even get past the hall.

We just had time to hear one senior Heythrop lady shrieking “Whose cur dogs are these!” as Bicester Farmer eyed up her boeuf bourguignon. Two of us, minus our red coats, were allowed back in with couples to retrieve our charges and, slightly crestfallen, we made our way back to our own kennels.

It did, however, end on a good

note, as the following week we met at Marston St Lawrence with John Sumner, who had asked the Duke of Marlborough to have a day. At tea after a goodish day, I was keeping rather a low profile when the Duke lent across.

“Ian, I hear you finished up at Blenheim last Saturday — must have been rather a good hunt!”

Burbling into my whisky, I think I garbled: “Yes, it was!”

Turning to my wife Pammie, he said “Were you in on it?

“Yes,” she mumbled.

“How did you get across the river and the canal?”

“Luckily, we found a bridge,” we murmured.

“How very fortuitous,” said Marlborough with a twinkle, and what a good egg he was, we thought. He later had quite a few days at Badminton and often pulled my leg.

FORBIDDEN TERRITORY

NOT every excursion into a foreign land ended without a certain amount of excitement. Again at the top end of the Bicester country, we found

ourselves in the Warwickshire country near Napton with a mad keen local farmer as our guide.

“Don’t worry, they are all friends of mine round here!” he cried.

Jumping a rather large hedge with an extremely nasty drop, we realised suddenly we had lost our pilot and, when a very irate individual stepped out of a Land Rover brandishing a shotgun, it dawned on us that maybe we were in forbidden territory.

Then the first barrel churned the grass just in front of our horses and the farmer shouted at kennel-huntsman Brian Pheasey, field master Peter Houghton Brown and me: “Now you three, you are all going to jump back the way you came.”

At that point, Peter lightened the situation by replying: “I can promise you, I will sit here until my horse and I drop dead — but I am not going to jump that fence back again!”

Given the respite, and with a little judicious backtracking, followed by a mad gallop to the gate on to the road, we all heaved a sigh of relief and set off to find the hounds.

The moral of the story is that running into your neighbour’s country — as long as it was in the spirit of the chase and the ground rules were adhered to — was much admired and great fun. It has obviously changed a great deal since 2005, but occasionally trail-layers will either get lost or be inveigled by friendly landowners to beat the bounds, so perhaps a dash over the border is not entirely a thing of the past — keep up the old traditions, we say.