222 England's oldest hunt. 



as whips, who brought up hounds the night before hunting. They 

 numbered then about 18 couples, perhaps a little uneven in size and 

 condition, yet a sporting lot, many of them well-bred drafts from Mr. 

 Lambton and Squire Hill. In order to ensure the foxes being above 

 ground, the earths were stopped at midnight, and a fire kept blazing 

 in the sand pit till daylight, when the hunt commenced. My mount 

 on my first opening day, October, 1825, was on the shoulders of one 

 of my father's men-servants. I saw three foxes killed, and clearly 

 remember how one of them was held up by one of the whips in a tree, 

 all the hounds baying around, accompanied by the sounding of several 

 horns and the who-whoops of the assembled field." 



Such then was Mr. Parrington's birthplace — within the 

 very sound of the yap of the fox. He himself tells us his 

 father went there in 1808, and that Middlesbrough then con- 

 sisted of a large farmhouse and premises, hinds' houses, etc. 



" The house in which I was born (in 1818) stood on an elevated 

 ground, surrounded by most excellent grass land, close to the River Tees. 

 About 500 yards from the house, and adjoining the road, was a sandpit, 

 with fox and rabbit earths, and a brood or two of foxes occupied the 

 main earths almost every year. The Cleveland Hounds often opened 

 the season by their first meet at Middlesbrough, and I remember in the 

 autumn of 1825 they killed three foxes out of our turnips. My father 

 was the only responsible person in the parish, and was constable, 

 overseer, churchwarden, and surveyor of the highways. The front of 

 our house, which stood a little to the North of St. Hilda's Church, 

 was the burial ground, and occasionally a corpse was buried there. 

 At such times a room in our house was used as a temporary chapel. 

 Ignorant people have described Middlesbrough, before falling into the 

 hands of the Quakers, as a wretched single dwelling on a dismal swamp — 

 a sad libel on the dear old place. It was certainly lonely, but a lovely 

 place, to which all our family were devotedly attached. When our 

 house was pulled down a quantity of very old oak, curiously carved, 

 was found, taken no doubt from the old monastery." 



One may gather much regarding Mr. Parrington as a 

 sportsman if we but read between the lines of his own journal 

 For instance, he concludes his remarks in it for the season 

 1835-6 with the following :— 



" The sport of the Cleveland this season has been considered good, 

 considering how unlucky they have been in having bad scents. They 

 have done their work in good style, and have had several rattlers 

 without a kill. I only wish that the next season may be equal to the 

 past. Please God we may all live and enjoy it." 



Mr. Thomas Parrington was one of six sporting brothers, 



