^bc mmns of Mi^nnsta)? 3.55 



of five years, a pack was started by the then Sir Watkin, 

 who is still remembered for the magnificent festivities' 

 which celebrated his coming of age on the 24th of 

 April 1791. Fifteen thousand persons dined that day 

 in Wynnstay Park. The cooks from London filled three 

 coaches ; 31 bullocks, 80 sheep, 50 calves, 50 hogs, 70 

 pigs, 660 fowls, 296 ducklings, 157 turkeys, 166 hams, 

 18,000 eggs were consumed and washed down by hogs- 

 heads of claret and butts of old Wynnstay ale. Su^'ch 

 a coming of age had never been known within the 

 memory of man. And when, two years later, this 

 gallant young baronet revived the ancestral hounds, the 

 occasion was celebrated by a dinner and ball on a 

 scarcely less sumptuous scale. These hounds, however, 

 only hunted hare, except on the rare occasions when a 

 bag-fox was turned down, and I think they must have 

 been discontinued before the baronet of 1841 came into 

 his inheritance. 



The greatest and princeliest of all the Wynns was t/t. 

 Sir Watkin whose name is associated with the most 

 glorious period the Wynnstay country has ever known 

 Born m 1820, educated at Westminster and Christ- 

 church, Oxford, Sir Watkin, after a brief sojourn at the 

 University, was gazetted to a cornetcy in the Life 

 Guards at the age of nineteen. His military duties 

 prevented him from taking charge of the hounds, which, 

 as I have already stated, were purchased for him by Mr 

 Price in 1841, but he practically financed the pack of 

 which Mr James Atty, who was then renting Penley 

 Hall, became Master. I knew Mr Atty well during his 

 later days at Rugby, where he died some twelve or fifteen 

 years ago, and I retain a vivid recollection of him as one 

 of the best specimens of an English gentleman I have 



