A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



Southward lie the moors belonging to Eden- 

 hall and Greystoke and the Marshalls, and 

 then a wide range of hills stretch from Kes- 

 wick, by Wastwater and Dalegarth and 

 Muncaster, to the mouth of the Duddon. 



Grouse are to be found in Cumberland 

 almost wherever there is heather, but many 

 of the fells are very green and give better 

 feeding for sheep than game. They are 

 also plentiful on many of the lower mosses or 

 flows. 1 



Partridges, besides being more or less com- 

 mon wherever there is cultivation, wander in 

 places up into the hills, and then are to be 

 met with in the great stone walled ' seeve ' or 

 rush-covered enclosures often far away from 

 any turnips or cornfields. These enclosures, 

 before the new law made their lives a burden 

 to them, were the homes of many strong- 

 limbed lusty hares, and were desirable places 

 for coursing. The writer of this article well 

 remembers in the ' seventies ' forty-six hares 

 being counted in a 4-acre field belonging 

 to his father, feeding on a May morning on 

 the young oats, and he was present at a 

 coursing meeting in the same parish of 

 Moresby when more than sixty hares were 

 turned out of the 'Priest Ground,' a 30- 

 acre patch of rough unpreserved land lying 

 at the foot of Whillimoor. There is still 

 plenty of cover on the ' Priest Ground ' though 

 it has been drained and limed since then, but 

 hares now are very few and far between. In 

 those days what were called the ' preserves ' on 

 Lord Lonsdale's Whitehaven estate stretched 

 far and wide ; a country into which the har- 

 riers were on no account to be allowed to 

 wander. It is little wonder then that with ' its 

 heathery grouse moors . . . saltings, bogs and 

 mosses along the Solway and the Irish Sea, 

 highly cultivated arable and pasture land in 

 the plain of Cumberland, richly-wooded river 

 valleys and sheltered combes, mountains, 

 meres, tarns and fells,' 8 this county has always 

 been famous for the varieties of its game and 

 wildfowl. But though the variety is great it 

 is not, with some few exceptions, one where 

 very big bags are obtained. The properties 

 and farms are not as a rule large, and where 

 the acreage is wide, as in the fell country, the 

 land is, as has been said, unproductive of 

 game. 



1 A few years ago a pair of grouse found out a 

 small patch of heather, about 3 acres in extent, at 

 Froggo Tarn near St. Bees, and bred on it. This 

 patch is about 3 miles from the nearest bit of real 

 moor, viz. Dent, and is surrounded entirely by 

 cultivated land. The late Mr. Jefferson of Spring- 

 field shot some of the brood. 



8 Fauna of Lakeland, p. x. 



If the first week in September sees the 

 harvest well started, 3 there will be few small 

 properties through the length and breadth of 

 the land which are not carefully shot over, 

 and though the reward may often be a small 

 one, yet everything is a question of degree, 

 and a man who comes home with eight or 

 ten brace, when he only expected to shoot 

 three or four, will probably enjoy his day 

 more than the owner of a big manor whose 

 bag falls short by twenty brace of the hundred 

 he was told he should get. It is pleasant to 

 think of these small parties of sportsmen out 

 in the autumn ; statesmen on their own 

 grounds, tenant farmers renting the shooting 

 on their holdings and perhaps that of a neigh- 

 bour or two ; the bags will not be swelled by 

 hares as they used to be ; in some places a 

 pheasant is never seen, a stray snipe or hare 

 or duck make up the variety. The little 

 holiday, the day snatched from the routine of 

 the farm, is good for the men, and we may 

 be sure for the country also. 



Shooting in Cumberland during the last 

 century seems to have been carried on for the 

 most part after a quiet reasonable fashion, and 

 owing to the number of small properties was 

 participated in by many people. Where a 

 large head of game was kept up the landlords 

 have dealt fairly with their tenants, and these 

 are the reasons, with one other to be added, 

 why not so much has been heard in this 

 county of the various troubles which game 

 preservers often meet with elsewhere, viz. 

 poaching on a large scale, grumbles from far- 

 mers as to damage done to crops by hares and 

 rabbits and pheasants, to turnips by walking 

 across them, to sheep by continually shifting 

 them when driving grouse. Probably the 

 other reason is the sporting instinct which 

 exists in a greater or less degree in most 

 Cumberland people's breasts. No doubt this 

 sporting instinct accounts for some poaching, 

 but it accounts also, we feel sure, for the 

 wish the average farmer feels, if he and his 

 landlord ' get on ' at all together, that the 

 latter should find a reasonable amount of 

 game on his land when he comes to look for 

 it. In olden days, sixty or seventy years ago, 

 when, except on the larger estates, gamekeepers 

 and preserving were practically unknown, any 

 sportsman, who was also in the widest sense 

 of the word a gentleman, was welcome to 

 wander anywhere with his gun, would meet 



3 In the Carlisle Journal of September I and 

 12, 181012, are notices calling attention to the 

 lateness of the season and strongly recommending 

 sportsmen to abstain from shooting ' till the whole 

 crop is severed from the ground.' 



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