i8 THE COMPLETE FOXHUNTER 



Combe called his hounds the Old Berkeley, in remem- 

 brance of the name, and retained the livery. He then 

 goes on to say: ''To show the increase in packs of 

 hounds in the last eighty or hundred years, my father 

 used to hunt all the country from Kensington Gardens 

 to Berkeley Castle and Bristol. Scratch Wood, a 

 cover close to Wormwood Scrubs, was the nearest 

 cover to London ; but I have heard old Tom Oldaker 

 say that, while with my father, he found a fox in 

 Scratch Wood, and lost him in the rough ground and 

 cover in Kensington Gardens. There was a kennel at 

 Cranford, I believe a kennel at Gerard's Cross in my 

 father's time, and I know there was one at Nettlebed." 

 The last-named village lies between Henley-on-Thames 

 and Oxford on the north side of the Thames, and is 

 now on the boundary of the South Oxfordshire country. 

 The above quotation speaks for itself, but if one took 

 a direct line from Cranford to Berkeley Castle, the old 

 Berks, V.W.H., and Duke of Beaufort's countries 

 would be bisected, and it is extremely improbable that 

 the Berkeley hounds hunted regularly in these districts. 

 Indeed, the most likely solution of the story is that the 

 Earls of Berkeley took hounds with them when they 

 travelled between their Gloucestershire and Middlesex 

 seats, and that they had their regular kennels at either 

 place, while Nettlebed would be an occasional kennel 

 for hunting a country which, after all, is only about 

 five-and-twenty miles distant from Cranford. 



The Craven country dates to the time of the fourth 

 Lord Craven, in 1739, but has been a subscription pack 

 for more than a hundred years, and its neighbour, the 

 Vine, is said to have been started in 1770, and has a 

 list of masters which goes back to 1790. The H.H., 

 or Hampshire Hunt, dates from about 1745, but the 



