▲ WHEN FOUR BECAME ONE,
Once a year, the Two Bridges Hunt Club unites the four hunts that call Dartmoor home, for dinner and a day’s challenging sport
Founded by the Dartmoor hunting community in 1929 to reciprocate Edward, Prince of Wales’s hospitality at nearby Prince Hall, the Two Bridges Hunt Club has grown into something of an institution for those who ride to hounds on Dartmoor. The club takes its name from a moorland outpost that stands beside the old turnpike road across Dartmoor downstream of the West Dart’s confluence with the River Cowsic. Membership is limited to a hundred individuals, drawn from subscribers to the four moorland packs that hunt the 450 square miles of high, wild country between Okehampton in the north and Ivybridge in the south, together with members of the Royal Navy Saddle Club, but all must be (or perhaps must have been) capable of ‘riding the high moor’. This qualification may sound innocuous but it takes a special skill to keep in touch with hounds when they race across terrain strewn with lumps of broken granite and quaking peat bogs.
Members meet up in February for dinner at the eponymous hotel, which is followed by a day’s hunting provided in rotation by the Dartmoor, Mid Devon, South Devon and Spooners & West Dartmoor hunts. Thirty years have elapsed since I last donned hunt evening dress to attend the annual dinner – on that occasion I had to keep a clear head since it was my turn to provide sport the next day as Master and huntsman to the Spooners – this time I was returning by invitation of the chairman and former Mid Devon MFH, George Lyon-smith, to address members and propose the traditional toast to foxhunting after a fine dinner of locally raised beef. It was heartening to note the continued observance of other customs, such as the signing of a record book by everyone present (each member is encouraged to invite a guest) and a raffle for the hand-painted menu cards that adorn every table. These charming depictions of hunting scenes and Dartmoor landmarks are contributed by local artists, which once included the famous equine and sporting painter Sir Alfred Munnings.
Another custom – and a concession to overindulgence the night before – is a delayed meet at 11.30am the following morning, which was well attended by hunting enthusiasts from all over Dartmoor. It had been the turn of the Spooners’ hounds to perform last year, but as their then Master, Andrew Smith, revealed to dinner guests the previous evening his hounds were coughing and unable
to fulfil the obligation. Their place was taken by 15 couple of sharp-looking hounds from the Mid Devon and their huntsman since 2016, Duncan Hume MFH, who graduated to hunting following several years as a soldier in the Blues and Royals. At first glance, his pack appears to have been bred along modern English lines but there is also an infusion of fell hound blood from the
Ullswater, which Hume values for its independence and steadiness to riot.
VIEW FROM THE SADDLE
Surveying the crowded hotel car park from the saddle of the enormous hunter Lyon-smith has kindly provided is to absorb a timeless scene unblemished by any sign of protest, stewards or police, just scores of locals gathered to enjoy the camaraderie of a thoroughly old-fashioned meet.
The boundaries of all four packs converge at Postbridge a couple of miles west, but on this special day the incumbent huntsman has the whole moor at his disposal. Hounds are first taken into the Spooners country to draw up the West Dart River towards the iconic Wistman’s Wood, one of three highaltitude oak woodlands that endure as relics from an ancient forest that covered much of Dartmoor before it was cleared by Mesolithic hunter gatherers around 5000BC. Here, the stunted oaks and jumbled rocks through which they sprout are covered in a thick green film of moss, and clusters of dwarf bracken cling to skeletal branches like orchids in a rain forest.
The ancient wood is an eerie place at the best of times, even more so when the fog comes swirling in to choke the setting in grey mist that distorts timber and rock into surreal and ghostly apparitions. There is no fog today, just scudding grey clouds chasing shadows across the moor, and a clean skyline punctured by ragged tors overlooking grassy plains leeched of colour by the ravages of a long Dartmoor winter. The vista is splattered with stands of thick gorse, which has gradually been reclaiming the moor ever since the reduction of stocking rates by English Nature. “There’s no view of rural England that cannot be improved by a pack of hounds, but even more so on Dartmoor,” proclaims a bowler-hatted Richard Walton moments before hounds open on the slopes of Hollowcombe.
A knowledgeable field watching hounds pick away at the trail includes several past and present Masters, amongst them Guy Morlock, who traded his hunting horn for a stalker’s life on Jura, and former Modbury harriers Master Martin Daw, who carries an emergency shoeing kit on his saddle. Few have travelled as far as Martin Allison, who works during the week in Covent Garden for his family fruit and vegetable business but returns to fieldmaster for the Spooners at weekends. The breeze has got up and hounds take time to settle to a twisty trail that doubles back so that those who were in front suddenly find themselves at the rear of the field. My horse may be a giant but John makes light work of treacherous rocks, expertly slipping his hooves in and out of fissures that could trap and hold a less experienced mount. Hounds plunge across the East Dart into the Mid Devon country upstream of Postbridge, where the crossing is hideously boggy, rocky and clustered with prickly gorse but every
Hounds plunge across the East Dart into Mid Devon Country, the crossing boggy, rocky and clustered with gorse
horse ploughs through safely to the far bank, only for the South Devon’s MFH, Louise Watson, to flounder belly deep in an innocuous-looking path that several riders had already galloped along without incident.
When hounds check amongst a sea of gorse a shrill, lone voice proclaims the line and with the huntsman some way adrift – it’s impossible to ride this country straight – Lyon-smith, who is our fieldmaster for the day, acts quickly and decisively by cheering the others onto the cry. His intervention regains momentum at a critical juncture, for the pack is quickly up together once more and chiming away towards the beckoning green bulk of Fernworthy forest. Unless you are stogged – Dartmoor vernacular for being stuck in a bog – it’s rare to leave the ground here but we sail over a stone wall just as hounds disappear amongst trees groaning softly beneath the strong breeze. Hounds have run for an hour and 20 minutes but the huge plantation has been the downfall of many a promising hunt and their huntsman blows hounds up when they check.
SAVOURING A CIGAR
The field has been thinned out by this run but Anthony Loveys Jervoise, who carries a knife tucked into his breast pocket on the end of a watch chain, produces a fat cigar from inside his black coat and lights up. “There’s nothing quite like savouring a cigar after a really good hunt,” says the former MFH, who is still only halfway through his treat when we cross the Moretonhampstead road into South Devon country. As their professional huntsman Robert Metcalf rides up with Hume to show him the way, hounds pick up a line within sight of the famous Warren
House Inn, where it is claimed a peat fire has burnt continuously since 1845; like most of the surrounding land, the highest and loneliest hostelry in southern England is owned by the Duchy of Cornwall.
FORESTRY FINISH
This hunt also ends up amongst forestry at Soussons, where the field stands listening to hounds running beneath the trees with a strong cry that had been difficult to discern during the earlier, windswept hunt across open moorland. This is the first time we have been stationary all day, and a convenient moment for our fieldmaster’s horse to lose a shoe, which is speedily replaced by countryman and former farrier with the Blues and Royals Ben Turpie. “Let’s have a four o’clock hunt,” grins Hume on his way to draw Colin Irish’s gorse after the hunt has fizzled out, much to the delight of the sporting farmer who pulls up in his old tractor in time to see six fine stags depart his covert. Unlike North Devon’s Exmoor, where hounds still play a key role in managing the wild red deer, they have never been hunted here on Dartmoor.
The field has dwindled to a handful by the time we reach Laughter Hole, many of the red coats that left the meet six hours earlier having long disappeared, although word reaches us that several are propping up the bar back at the Two Bridges Hotel. Neil Cole, who farms the bleak prison ground at Princetown and comes from a stalwart hunting family, drives up on his quad bike with two collies for a chat and a nip of whiskey, and shortly after his arrival hounds open above the East Dart River, which marks the boundary between the South Devon and Dartmoor Hunts.
When hounds leave Laughter Hole on a hunt across open country we expect them to streak away into the gloaming but their huntsman has to nudge the pack forward beneath a sour east wind to keep the hunt going on a failing scent, until even this most determined of practitioners is forced to admit defeat.
Tired hounds shelter in the lee of a tall Devon bank as they wait for the hunt lorry to arrive, leaving sevenyear-old Lily French, Jessica Mortimer, Tom Starling and I to hack back to Postbridge in the twilight, leading halfa-dozen horses between us. Despite her long day in the saddle, the irrepressible and ever cheerful Lily urges her snow-white pony, Barney, forward every time we approach a gate declaring, “It’s easier for me to open the gates as I’m so much closer to the ground.” When we part beneath a silvery moon half an hour later, I realise the young rider has already qualified for membership of Two Bridges Hunt Club; no doubt she will be around to help celebrate this unique club’s centenary in 10 years’ time.