Martin Letts
Master huntsman and breeder of hill hounds who spent nearly 60 years with the College Valley Hunt
MARTIN LETTS, who has died aged 88 “in office”, was joint master and former huntsman of the College Valley/north Northumberland Foxhounds from 1964 for 58 seasons.
He was a highly regarded breeder of hill hounds, and the bloodlines of his Fell cross modern English foxhounds are to be found in many hunt kennels today, in Britain, Ireland and America.
In his professional life he was managing director of Letts diaries in Dalkeith, being the sixth generation of the family, with his brother Anthony, to run the firm, which was established in 1796 and has 500 employees worldwide.
Intelligent, knowledgeable and sometimes very scary, Letts possessed a disarming wit and a deep knowledge and love of nature, the countryside, hunting and humanity.
When he later followed hounds on foot he was seldom parted from his totemic garb of flat cap, checked shirt and tie, heavy tweed jacket and emblematic Glendale shepherd’s crook.
The elder of two brothers and four sisters, John Martin Letts was born on February 15 1934 and brought up in Kent. He followed his father to Marlborough College where, as he recalled in his memoirs Memories of My Life at the College Valley, he was soon following the Tedworth, and their kindly professional huntsman, George Goodwin, on his bicycle.
He recalled hunting with his English master Mr Gough in the ancient Savernake Forest when a low branch claimed the teacher’s top hat and ginger wig. The hunt master’s daughter galloped to the front and exclaimed: “Daddy, Daddy, Mr Gough has been scalped!” The hapless beak was forever after known by the boys as “Wiggy”.
Letts was also instrumental, with his fellow pupils Nick Wykes and James Bouskell, in establishing the Marlborough College beagles, now flourishing as the Palmer/marlborough.
After two years of National Service in Malaya, Letts joined the family publishing firm and, for six seasons, hunted the Bolebroke beagles in Kent, and also the Eastern Counties otterhounds.
From 1958, he recalled, “the highlight of the sporting year was our fortnight’s visit to the hills of Northumberland in which one had to balance hound craft and alcoholic pressures.”
It was on a Northumberland trip in the early 1960s that Letts was introduced to the noted master of the College Valley, and breeder of the hill hound, Sir Alfred Goodson (master, 1924-79). He was to become his worthy joint master, huntsman and successor, hunting the hounds from 1964 until 2004.
“Luck has an undeniable part to play in hunting,” recalled Letts in his memoir, and the best bit of luck he had was to meet and marry Sir Alfred’s step-grandaughter Eildon, who joined him in the mastership in 1987.
The newlywed couple lived at Kilham, outside Wooler in Northumberland, where they presided with much informal hospitality and friendship. Alastair Jackson, later director of the Masters of Foxhounds Association, then hunting the West Percy, and William Nunneley, who went on to hunt several packs, including the Morpeth, were frequent recipients of their kindness.
“I don’t mind a man coming to Sunday lunch but I draw the line that he is still at the dining room table on Monday morning,” Letts was once heard to observe.
Years later, Nunneley recalled Letts coming to him for dinner in Yorkshire, with the ashes of a great friend, Geoffrey Cragghill, master of the Dummer beagles, which he had been charged to scatter in Northumberland. As port was being served, Letts brought the urn to the dining table with the words: “Geoffrey never missed a glass of port and he is not going to miss one now.”
Letts was seen as one of the best hound breeders in the country. The long-serving Blencathra huntsman Barry Todhunter, who often exchanged breeding programmes with him, recalled that Letts “understood the Fell hound, and the bloodlines he used from us knitted well together for their ability to hunt on their own.”
In kennels, Letts was ably assisted from 1985 by another long-serving figure, kennel huntsman Andrew Proe, who kept the hounds fit and fed and at all times exercised discretion and diplomacy.
Ian Mckie joined Letts in the College Valley/north Northumberland mastership as huntsman (the two hunts had amalgamated in 1982) in 2003, for 13 seasons, and recalled him not only as a hound breeder “among the very best”, but as an “extraordinary judge of character and excellent wit”.
Such was Letts’s love of hounds that for many years he kept a photograph of one of his best hounds, College Valley Raglan (1966), in his wallet pocket. It was eventually torn and tattered, and his wife substituted the photograph with one of herself. “I thought it diplomatic not to re-arrange her gift,” said Letts.
She survives him with their daughter.