SPORT ANCIENT AND MODERN 



meetings used to be held at Iveston, Laiichester, 

 Stanley, Greencroft, Tow Law (Inkerman), and 

 Cornsay for many years, but owing to the effect 

 of legislation, hares became scarce and the 

 pleasant little gatherings dropped out of the 

 calendar. The sport was conducted on very 

 primitive lines ; and according to the testimony 

 of the still surviving Mr. George Elliott of 

 Seaton Moor, these meetings were very small 

 affairs. The farmers used to get some six or 

 seven dogs together and run them for small 

 stakes. They thought it a very good day if they 

 obtained half a dozen trials. The coursing 

 dinner, too, before or after the running was then 

 a great institution, the good fellowship which 

 sport promotes keeping them in a state of 

 joviality for days after. A figure at these meet- 

 ings was John Havelock, who was head keeper to 

 Mr. John Gregson for sixty years. The passing 



of the Hares and Rabbits Bill threatened for a 

 time the extinction of coursing in the county. 

 But a reaction has set in within the last two 

 decades. Landlords find that the granting of the 

 necessary permission to course over their acres 

 suppresses poaching of game in a great measure, 

 for the miners, who as a rule are fond of the 

 greyhound, act as so many unpaid watchers in 

 return for the privilege granted. The barbarous, 

 cowardly and inhuman practice now so popular 

 in mining districts of coursing rabbits in an 

 inclosure with greyhounds has very materially 

 affected the sport. Hundreds of greyhounds are 

 now kept solely for this purpose. The patrons 

 of this horrible libel upon sport find they can 

 win more money with less outlay by rabbit 

 coursing than they can at the more legitimate 

 and more health-giving recreation in the open 

 fields. 



SHOOTING 



Judged by the standard of modern require- 

 ments, big bags, Durham, with the exception of 

 its grouse moors, is not a good shooting county. 

 Its natural disadvantages of a generally heavy 

 soil, a cold climate, and a high-lying elevation 

 are inevitably augmented by its mineral indus- 

 try. It is scarcely exaggeration to declare that 

 throughout its length and breadth there does not 

 exist one of those dense warm hedgerows that 

 form such admirable nesting and ' dusting ' 

 places for the partridges of the southern counties ; 

 its woods are largely composed of beech, a selfish 

 tree which forbids undergrowth, and its teeming 

 population is by no means the least factor in 

 discouraging a large head of natural — as opposed 

 to artificially produced — game. This is not so 

 much due to poaching, for the Durham miners 

 pay but scant attention to this branch of indus- 

 try, as to their extraordinary predilection for 

 trespass. The pitman has one attribute in com- 

 mon with his homing-pigeon, that of making 

 straight for the place where he would be, and as 

 soon as he, in his own vernacular, 'comes to 

 bank,' he makes a bee line for home, until un- 

 interrupted user of this practice for generations 

 has produced the most astonishing network of 

 so-called ' rights of way ' all over the county. 

 Game is thus not only constantly disturbed by 

 pedestrians, but as most pitmen like to be accom- 

 panied by a dog during their leisure rambles, the 

 nests in the breeding season are perpetually 

 harried by hunting curs. 



Other causes militate against the natural pro- 

 duction of game in Durham. It is an admitted 

 fact that game always flourishes best on large 

 farms, and it is rare to find one of over 300 acres 

 in the county, where, indeed, the majority of 

 the holdings would probably average less than 



2 409 



half that size. Another potent factor for ill is 

 the great increase of late years in the number of 

 rooks, a matter which affects the farmers no less 

 adversely than sportsmen. This is undoubtedly 

 due to the fact that rook-shooting has become 

 the fashion. Then, too, if preservation has in- 

 creased, so too have shooters, with the result 

 that all game, but especially partridges, is deci- 

 mated to an extent that precludes reproduction. 



The chief glory of Durham, as far as shooting 

 is concerned, must, however, be attributed to 

 its grouse moors.^ At the present day a line 

 drawn from Eggleston on the south to Edmond- 

 byers on the north would define the grouse- 

 producing zone of Durham with tolerable accu- 

 racy. There are, of course, neither ptarmigan 



nor capercailzie ' in the county ; and black 

 game are only found in very limited quanti- 

 ties on the fringe of the moors, though until 

 quite recently they were occasionally shot on 

 Brandon Hill, within four miles of the city or 

 Durham.' 



It is only within the last thirty or forty years 

 that the Durham moors have achieved their true 

 standard of excellence, and the reason may be 

 summed up in the one word — ' driving.' Up to 

 1870 all grouse were shot over dogs, and grand 

 sport as this is, the sportsman who would make a 

 bag on an English moor by these means must 



' In 1668 ' Spenny Moor and the adjoining moor 

 of Byers Green were open commons, and covered 

 with heather' ; Richley, Hist, of Bishop Auckland. 



^ Bones of the capercailzie have been found in the 

 Teesdale ' cave,' so it must have once been indigenous 

 to the county. 



' The last — a grey hen, sad to relate— was shot 

 during the season of 1902-3 in the 'Middles' near 

 Brancepeth Castle. 



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