A HISTORY OF BUCKINGHAMSHIRE 



Walter Gilbey, kept a few pointers in Essex ; he 

 gave me one of his dogs and it worked for several 

 seasons ; my father shot over it in 1879, the last 

 time he carried a gun. In Buckinghamshire, as 

 elsewhere, the days of pointer and setter were 

 numbered, as far as partridges are concerned, 

 with the advent of the breech-loader. 2 



Little hand-rearing was done in the county at 

 the time the writer's father began shooting, about 

 1866 ; sportsmen then were satisfied with small 

 bags, and this seems to have been particularly the 

 casein Bucks ; perhaps this was due in some mea- 

 sure to the nature of the beechwoods which form 

 so large a proportion of the pheasant coverts. 

 There is little undergrowth in these woods, hence 

 the birds wander, rendering it a costly and un- 

 satisfactory business to raise a large head of game. 

 Mr. Gilbey preserved between 3,000 and 4,000 

 acres of shooting on the lands lying north of the 

 Great Western Railway. It extended from the 

 Biddies farm, near Burnham Beeches station, to 

 the Yew Tree at Hedgerley and embraced all 

 the Beeches, the ground now occupied by the 

 Burnham Golf Club, Lower Woods, Dorney 

 Wood, Egypt, and part of Hall Barn. The 

 following were the bags made in the later 'sixties; 

 they possess a certain interest as representing not 

 only the shooting obtained in the county forty 

 years ago, but the shooting obtained with the 

 earliest breech-loading guns : 



Concerning the item ' rabbits,' it must be men- 

 tioned that these were killed over a small pack 

 of beagles ; this is excellent sport, though it is 

 not a method that lends itself to the making of 

 large bags. In later years, as the game books 

 show, the number of pheasants killed was con- 

 siderably larger ; little hand-rearing was done in 

 the 'sixties on this shooting. The largest bag 

 before extensive rearing was adopted was one 

 made in the early 'seventies, namely 171 phea- 

 sants in Dorney Wood. Ten times as many 

 are now killed every season over this area, but 

 other game is less plentiful than it was in the 

 'sixties and 'seventies. The day's bag of part- 

 ridges varied from 15 to 25 brace to three or 

 four guns, who walked up the birds or shot them 

 over dogs ; driving was of course unknown. A 

 bag of 20 brace to a single gun in a day's shoot- 

 ing was an achievement considered worthy of 



* I remember, when I was a boy living with a tutor 

 in Cheshire, walking with the late Duke of West- 

 minster when he shot the coverts near the vicarage 

 where I was living. The duke used a team of 

 Clumber spaniels; they were wonderfully broken, and 

 never ranged more than 20 yds. in front of the guns, 

 who shot in line. 



record. Such a performance by Mr. Lowndes was 

 mentioned as a memorable feat in the Field fifty 

 years ago ; in what part of the county this bag 

 was made does not appear. 



There has never been much shooting in the 

 county north of Aylesbury ; the late Sir Henry 

 Verney preserved at Claydon, but for the most 

 part the big woods are given over to the fox, and 

 the deep clays are not suitable for partridges. 



In 1846 when the Prince Consort visited the 

 Duke of Buckingham at Stowe the bag included 

 70 hares. This, at the time, was thought to be 

 an extraordinary bag, but up to the passing of 

 the Ground Game Act much larger bags of hares 

 were made. 



The late Lord Carrington confined his shoot- 

 ing to Gayhurst House, Newport Pagnel ; 

 practically speaking he did not preserve the game, 

 and five brace of partridges per gun was con- 

 sidered a good day's bag. The present owner, 

 Earl Carrington, gave up preserving in the north 

 of the county, and about 1868 began to devote 

 attention to preservation on his Wycombe es- 

 tates. Up to that date a hare was rarely seen 

 on these lands, and if one appeared, the chair- 

 makers, who ply their craft in the district, never 

 rested till they secured it. The Wycombe 

 Abbey estate now, having regard to its compara- 

 tively small extent, some 3,000 acres, affords 

 some of the best shooting in the county. 



It was in 1869 that His Majesty paid his first 

 shooting visit to Wycombe. To show how 

 greatly the shooting had improved under Lord 

 Carrington 's control, it may be mentioned that in 

 November, 1882, the party, of which I had the 

 pleasure to be a member, who shot Gill Field 

 Lower Grounds and the Park, killed over 

 200 pheasants and 196 hares. In 1885, before 

 Lord Carrington left England to assume the 

 governorship of New South Wales, there was a 

 four days' shoot at Wycombe an average of 

 seventy brace of partridges was killed on each 

 day. 



It was Earl Carrington, if I mistake not, who 

 introduced the modern style of pheasant-shooting 

 in the county ; certainly it was at Wycombe 

 that I first saw the birds driven high over the 

 guns ; this was in the park below Daws Hil! 

 Lodge. The late General Owen Williams, so 

 well known on the Turf, was a member of the 

 party, and excited my envious admiration by the 

 regularity with which he brought down these 

 high birds. In 1887 Wycombe Abbey and the 

 shooting were let to Mr. Waring. That gentle- 

 man died suddenly, and some members of my 

 family joined with me to take the shooting. A 

 large head of game had been reared, and in thir- 

 teen days the bag was 2,538 pheasants, 683 

 partridges, 263 hares, and 599 rabbits. Lord 

 Carrington was kind enough to give me the 

 shooting in the season before his return, 1889-90, 

 and though particular care was taken to leave a 



234 



