Digging deep
The lasting effect of Covid-19 on our favourite sport cannot be predicted, but history gives us much to feel positive about, says Andrew Sallis
How hunting can bounce back from the pandemic
THIS global pandemic has been likened to a world war, only this time against an enemy we can’t see. Historians will quantify its significance, but Covid-19 certainly caught most nations napping and strained society to the limit with its expectations, resources and conventions. Its lasting economic and social effect cannot be predicted, but history suggests that the “new normal” will include our favourite sports, including hunting.
Indeed, hunting had two glorious renaissances in the
20th century, each following the world wars. Life after each war was different to before, but new challenges resulted in revitalised sport.
Hunting has always championed tradition, but evolution has been equally important. Far from declining as feared, Baily’s Hunting Directory listed 238 packs of foxhounds in 1949–1950, an increase of 10 on pre-World War II numbers.
But the post-war countryside looked different; oceans of grass were guarded by barbed wire or had fallen under the plough.
Few hunts disbanded, but the majority existed on skeleton staff. Farmers kept hunts going, providing food for the remaining hounds and horses while welcoming the hunt, though many curtailed their seasons by February in the interest of potential crop-damage. Farmers even formed their own hunts, such as the Chiddingfold Farmers in Sussex, to maintain hunting in the area.
Masters and staff disappeared off to war, leaving older and retired hunt staff and the young to maintain kennels and hunt administration. Ladies stepped up to the plate, working in kennels, taking on masterships and hunting hounds.
While her husband was away, Ruth Fanshawe hunted the South Oxfordshire hounds with great style. She also played a significant role in aiding the quality of the foxhound by drafting South Oxon Poem 41 to her brother, Sir Peter Farquhar at the Portman. Poem’s offspring, Portman Freshman 49, described as possessing “a voice like the Bulls of Bashan”, sired one of the most influential dynasties.
Mrs Fanshawe’s hounds scored a remarkable point of more than 12 miles in the latter war years. Galloping in their wake on blowing ponies were the teenage Joe Hill, who hunted the hounds so well later in life, and his young friend, the huntsman’s son, Brian, who also became a brilliant amateur huntsman.
Mrs Fanshawe’s dedication to her unofficial role was unstinting. She would cycle to kennels, collect the hounds and hack to the meet alone, hoping a farmer’s son might act as whipper-in, hunt all day, then hack alone back to kennels, feed hounds and cycle home.
Foxhunting continued throughout Britain with the support of the Ministry of Agriculture, which acknowledged its importance in fox control, and permitted limited rations for both hounds and hunt horses. Tightly controlled supplies meant huntsmen became imaginative feeders. Flesh replaced expensive scotch oatmeal alongside other food processing “seconds”. George Barker, the famous Quorn huntsman, grew vegetables to supplement his hounds’ diet.
For the second time in a quarter of a century, hunts were forced to cull thousands of hounds. If the peril of distemper wasn’t enough, treasured breeding lines, many resurrected after World War I, were threatened with no knowledge of when or if hunting would resume. Famous packs were reduced to 10–15 couples. Major Bill Scott drafted 17½ couples from the North Cotswold to his friend Mason Houghland in the US to safeguard important strains.
SHORT-LIVED FEARS
POST-WAR, fears of hunting’s demise, its relevance and acceptability to the “modern” world were short-lived. Masters and huntsmen soon filled empty kennels with large entries of hounds, salvaging favoured lines and trying new outcrosses.
The Portman had to send hounds out to puppy walkers and farmers at times during the war and entered just five or six couples each wartime season. By the late 1940s they were able to enter 17 couples from 11 litters.
The regeneration of the foxhound was underway and the annual pilgrimage to the Peterborough Hound Show was now more popular than ever before.
As war progressed into peace time, some hunts decided to divide or un-amalgamate, such as the Old Berkeley East and West, to facilitate hunting in all areas under rations and petrol shortages: hacking to meets was
“Every obstacle to have beset hunting has given oxygen to the prophets of doom, but on every occasion, hunting has rebuilt itself and evolved”
still common-place and necessary, providing hardy, settled hounds and horses.
The link between the army and hunting was never stronger than after the war. Hunts encouraged soldiers with reduced subscriptions and commanding officers continued to see the benefits of hunting. These leaders of men, not all with charm and temperance, often had a certain disposition that wouldn’t curry much favour nowadays, but they certainly provided stability and organisation.
When Sir Harold Nutting retired from the Quorn mastership upon outbreak of war, there was no obvious successor, until the eccentric Major Philip Cantrell-Hubbersty rose to the challenge of acting master and secretary. His manner may not have been to everyone’s taste, but he kept the hunt afloat selflessly until his untimely death out hunting in 1947.
This loss provided another opportunity to break with convention as the Quorn committee appointed not only its first lady joint-master, the Major’s widow, the formidable Phyllis, but also Fred Mee, the first farmer in the mastership. Although no longer riding to hounds, Phyllis paved the way for a long line of distinguished lady masters in the Shires, none more so than Ulrica Murray Smith, who presided over the Quorn from 1960–85.
Major Sir David Black, 91, hunted in Leicestershire and Gloucestershire before settling back home to take the Garth and South Berks hounds.
“There were 12 masters of foxhounds in my regiment,” he recalls with pride. “The fortunes of many packs were saved by one or two families, like the wonderful Palmer family who almost singlehandedly kept the South Berks going during and after war.”
HORSE AND HOUND BREEDING
OUR nation of horse lovers had sacrificed the national herd for the 1914–18 war effort. Half a million horses, from the farm and hunting field, went off to Europe and beyond with all but a few officers’ horses returning.
The mechanised army didn’t have the same draw on the nation’s horses for World War II, thankfully, save for the 20,000 mostly already owned by the army who were dispatched to the
“Our nation had sacrificed the national herd for the war effort”
Middle East and beyond. The Irish farmers kept breeding stock which made its way to the English hunting field, too.
Jim Stevens, 96, known as “Little Steve”, whose career in hunt service started soon after the war, recalls, “The hunt servants were always well mounted – good strong, ¾-bred Irish type.”
Like so many of his cohort in hunt service, the war had a profound effect on Jim.
His eyes still moisten when he remembers his friends, raw in youth, falling like dominoes as he crawled up a Normandy beach. Fittingly, the French ambassador recently awarded him with the Légion d’Honneur in recognition of his contribution towards the future of a free France. Many returned unsettled and disillusioned from the war. Despite snatching days hunting when on leave, they returned home to find their hunt countries wired up and unmaintained.
On returning to the North Cotswold mastership, Major Bill Scott found it all too hard to take and left for a brief tenure in Ireland. Hunting was still hard work in the late 1940s, but victory meant hope and opportunity.
The hunting community was determined to enjoy itself after the ravages of war and conduct the sport “properly”. Masterships and committees found that a little money and a lot of hard work could restore the hunt country.
No longer were the pioneers of the modern English foxhound regarded as dangerous revolutionaries. Post-war, the previously heretical advances in breeding more athletic hounds were generally accepted as a force for good and longevity. Champions of the hitherto cumbersome oldEnglish type would cross the road in Piccadilly to avoid the likes of Sir Peter Farquhar, Lord Coventry and Ikey Bell.
As Sir Peter’s son, Capt Ian Farquhar, himself a talismanic master and huntsman for more than three decades, explains, “There was a tremendous sea
change of what hounds were acceptable. Some of the pomposity had gone and my father’s brave generation had gained huge respect through the war. The old and bigoted found themselves out on a limb.”
Lord Coventry’s death in
May 1940 at the hands of an SS Panzer Division robbed hunting of a visionary hound breeder, passionate about the benefit of Welsh outcrosses. The future of Lord Coventry’s own Croome hounds was rocked by this tragedy, but his daughter, Lady Maria, was to prove herself an able champion of her father’s legacy.
By the late 1950s, hunting was entering a gilded age of vast, hard-riding fields and a new generation of brilliant masters and huntsmen riding the crest of a wave, as the old guard and new order hunted together.
HUNTING’S EVOLUTION
EVERY obstacle to have beset hunting has given oxygen to the prophets of doom – railways, cars, barbed wire, world wars, urbanisation, the Hunting Act, now Covid-19 – but each time, hunting has rebuilt itself.
In 1952, Lord Knutsford wrote angrily in The Horseman’s Year, bemoaning everything from turnout, wire, poor foxes, even the attire of girl grooms. By stark contrast, the same season’s review in the Horse & Hound Yearbook records the “sport was never more popular” and “a meet of the hounds brings a touch of freshness and colour, all too rare in these drab days”.
The wealthy master-cumbenefactor began to give way to a new breed of master, more aware of the public relations needed with farmers, subscribers and public.
As David Brock, an outspoken and talented MFH, commented as early as 1948 in his Horseman’s Yearbook review on hunting finance, “a committee should ignore a prospective master’s financial resources and simply decide if he is the ‘right sort of man’. Alas, we have not yet reached that happy state of affairs; too many round holes are still filled by square, but beautifully gilded, pegs.”
Times were changing, though. Masters were soon drilled in public relations by Dorian Williams, master of the Whaddon Chase and doyen of TV equestrianism.
Austerity was tough. Increased social mobility undoubtedly broadened the share of the nation’s wealth, but money was not spread evenly throughout those who wanted to hunt.
The wider hunting community was encouraged through hunt supporters’ clubs and the Pony Club. Hunts were increasingly business-like, and large public events, such as the point-to-point became more commercial. Hunt balls, hunter trials and shows became commonplace.
These advances increased the hunt’s stock in the locality and brought in vital funds. Riding was increasingly popular, even among non-horsey families, and Lord Knutsford lamented the “riding schools now swelling the hunting field”. Many hunts would envy this influx of new blood nowadays.
Lurking over this resurgence was the spectre of an increasingly organised anti-hunting movement. When the world order was thrown up like a deck of cards, what fell was always going to be slightly different – a new society, opportunities, challenges. A new generation felt empowered to enjoy their rural heritage.
The 10th Duke of Beaufort, the pre-eminent master of the 20th century, assured the hunting world in 1946 that, “Economic problems and those of rationing and supply will be overcome, and if politeness and every consideration is shown to all connected with the land, then foxhunting shall flourish.”
And it did, from the Shires to the valleys and moors. The true saviours of hunting, then as now, were the farmers.