SPORT ANCIENT AND MODERN 



HARE-HUNTING 



It is probable that there was a period when 

 few Durham squires of any position were with- 

 out their pack of harriers, but the earliest men- 

 tion that has been traced of hare-hunting is in 

 1766, when 'some gentlemen were hunting on 

 Gateshead Fell the hare and three hounds fell 

 into an old pit-hole and were drowned.'' The 

 first reference to harriers as a distinct class of 

 hound occurs nine years later, in 1775, when, 

 under date of 27 November, we find that 



as the harriers of John Burdon of Hardwick, esq., 

 were running a hare they chanced on a fox, which 

 they ran and killed near Darlington after a very smart 

 chase of 25 miles, and crossed the Skerne ; out of 25 

 horsemen only two and the huntsman were in at the 

 death.' 



From about this date it is probable that hare- 

 hunting waned in popularity before the new 

 style of fox-hunting introduced by Mr. Lambton 

 and Lord Darlington ; but about the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century Mr. George Baker 

 of Elemore, a famous all-round sportsman of his 

 day, who had been master of the Lambton 

 Hounds in 1797, kept a private pack of harriers. 

 Little is known of them beyond the assertion 

 that they once found a fox at Elemore, and 

 killed it in Raby Park, a most remarkable point, 

 the length of which would lead one to suppose 

 that hounds changed foxes in the course of the 

 run, but this is disproved by the fact that it was 

 'a bob-tailed fox that they found, and a bob- 

 tailed fox that they killed." 



A well-known pack of a slightly later date 

 was that of Mr. Bowser, an extensive land- 

 owner near Bishop Auckland, the reputation of 

 which was so far established that even the great 

 Nimrod found it worth his while to have a day 

 with it in 1825. None the less he evidently 

 considered the whole thing beneath the serious 

 attention of a fox-hunter, and beyond stating 

 that Mr. Bowser took the field in pink, and 

 that hounds were hunted by an amateur, a 

 yeoman of the name of Harry Chapman, well 

 known with Lord Darlington's hounds, he has 

 little to tell us. But if Nimrod failed to do 

 justice to Mr. Bowser and his harriers their 

 fame has been handed down in imperishable 

 verse by John Borrowdale, town constable, poet 

 and tragedian, in his Lay of the Auckland Hunt. 

 This poem, dealing with one of the not infre- 

 quent occasions where Mr. Bowser hunted a fox 

 instead of his legitimate quarry, used to be recited 

 periodically on the boards of the Auckland 

 theatre by the author in person, clad in cast- 



' Gillespy's Col. 



' Ibid. It is curious to observe how Hardwick 

 appears to have always been associated with sport. 

 ' The Field, 24 April, 1897. 



2 40 



off hunting apparel of Mr. Bowser's. A short 

 extract from it is interesting, as giving the names 

 of some followers of the pack ^ — 



' The sportsmen of the chase were those 

 Bowser,' Ch.iytor,* Harland,' and two Shaftos.' 

 Wooler, Dobson,Chapman,°and our young Squire '" 

 And Lowson " who nobly brought up the rear. 

 With Joplin, too, as I've told you.' 



None the less, despite its more than local 

 reputation, nothing further seems known of 

 Mr. Bowser's pack, and the dates of its institu- 

 tion and of its dispersal are equally untrace- 

 able. However, his son, Mr. Richard Bowser, 

 the ' young Squire ' of the poem, kept up the 

 family tradition by purchasing a pack of harriers 

 from Mr. Hutchinson of Eggleston, in 1854, 

 with which he hunted his father's country until 

 1863, when he gave up hounds, only to resume 

 them again in 1868. Mr. Bowser kept this 

 second pack, with which he showed first-rate 

 sport, until i88i, when he finally sold them into 

 Wales. 



It is curious that no other pack of ' mounted ' 

 as opposed to ' foot ' harriers appears to have 

 existed in Durham until 1898 when Sir William 

 Chaytor started a private pack at Witton Castle, 

 of which the foundation was laid by his taking 

 over part of the Wolsingham foot harriers. 

 These hounds, however, proved useless for 

 mounted work, and Sir William purchased the 

 Ayton Harriers out of Cleveland, and supple- 

 mented them with drafts of dwarf foxhounds 

 from the Belvoir, Bilsdale, and other packs. By 

 these means he got together an exceedingly 

 smart pack of forty couples of 22 in. hounds, 

 which were hunted by his brother-in-law, 

 Mr. Allan Havelock-Allan of Blackwell Manor, 

 and showed first-rate sport for three seasons, when 

 the pack was broken up owing to the master's 

 temporary ill-health, and sold by auction at 

 York.12 



' M. Richley, Hist, of Bp. Auckland. 



^ Mr. R. Bowser. 



" Mr. Chaytor of Witton Castle. 



' Mr. Harland of Sutton Hall, York. 



" The Messrs. John and Thomas Duncombe Shafto 

 of Whitworth Park. 



' Thomas Chapman, the huntsman. 



'" Mr. Bowser, jun. 



" Mr. Newby Lowson of Witton Tower, the friend 

 and pupil of Turner, R.A. 



" Mention should be made of the ' Northumber- 

 land and Durham Harriers,' the property of Mr. 

 Frederick Lamb of Newcastle, who for many years 

 hunted the country round Newcastle both north and 

 south of the Tyne. They were, I believe, the 

 descendants of, or successors to, the Newcastle Cor- 

 poration Harriers, and can scarcely be regarded as a 

 Durham pack, though hunting part of the county. 



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