A HISTORY OF CUMBERLAND 



the beast first and hunting it afterwards. 

 On another occasion Mr. Wybergh, at the 

 request of a lady living near Arkleby, 

 brought his hounds with the view of de- 

 stroying a foulmart which was making ' sad 

 work ' among her young ducks. The hounds 

 headed off from a cat-hole in the barn close 

 by, and, after a long run at a good pace, 

 they returned to the same cat-hole. The 

 hay in the barn was then moved, and Mr. 

 Wybergh had the satisfaction of killing the 

 largest foulmart he ever saw. From these 

 incidents it may be gathered that the train- 

 ing of the foulmart hound became an object 

 of the first consideration. 



Mr. Norman Stordy of Thurstonfield, 

 whose family has been foulmart hunters since 

 hunting came into fashion, says that no 

 hound would be considered worth keeping 

 unless he could recover himself and follow 

 the scent ' toe-way.' It was an elementary 

 principle of the sport that a good hound 

 was never deceived in his direction. If he 

 happened to strike the foil or scent ' heel- 

 way,' he would soon return to the trail and 

 follow it where it was hottest. 



Old hunters are not agreed on the length 

 of time that the scent will lie on the ground 

 in favourable weather. We have one tale, 

 vouched for on good authority, that the same 

 foulmart was hunted for three days in suc- 

 cession, men and dogs resting at night and 

 taking up the drag on the following morning, 

 till at last the beast was found in a stone 

 drain and slaughtered. But a run of eight 

 hours was sufficient to glut the appetite of 

 most sportsmen. The late Mr. John Jennings 

 of Thornby Villa, who hunted the fox in 

 company with John Peel, once took the drag 

 of a foulmart at Miller Moss, to the west 

 of High Pike, and ran it to Sowerby Row, 

 and from thence onwards to Middlesceugh, 

 where it was dug out of a hole by the road 

 side, thus covering a distance of about twenty 

 miles, or eight miles as the crow flies. One 

 of the greatest disappointments Mr. Stordy 

 ever had, as well as one of the best day's 

 sport he remembers, was on the occasion of 

 a run from Fisher's Gill, where his hounds 

 came upon the trail, through Aikton and 

 Drumleaning to Oulton Moss. After two 

 hours' work at a brisk pace, the foulmart when 

 dug out was discovered to be a bitch with 

 only half a tail ! As females were exempt 

 from slaughter, no trophy remains to signalize 

 his triumph on that occasion. It was no un- 

 usual experience for hunters to follow the 

 trail from daybreak, or 4.30 a.m., till late in 

 the afternoon, when men and dogs were 

 obliged to desist from exhaustion. 



The natural features of the country were 

 so well adapted to the habits of the foul- 

 mart that it would be difficult to say in 

 which district it abounded most. It was found 

 almost everywhere. Old people of the fell-sides 

 say that they were so plentiful at one time that 

 the farmers had to shut their doors in order to 

 keep them out. In the low-lying tract to 

 the west of Carlisle, stretching to Maryport 

 and Silloth, so full of marsh and moss, rough 

 ground and damp woods, the foulmart bred in 

 abundance. This district was perhaps the 

 most notable in the county for this kind of 

 sport. Several packs of hounds hunted in- 

 discriminately over that area. There were 

 one or two packs at Carlisle, and packs' at 

 Thurstonfield, Wigton and Aspatria. There 

 does not appear to have been any under- 

 standing between the sportsmen as to a 

 division of territory, though the Aspatria 

 hounds usually threw^ off in the neighbour- 

 hood of Allonby. In the central district, the 

 pack kept by the Rev. C. H. Wybergh, for 

 fifty years vicar of Isel near Cockermouth, 

 enjoyed a sporting reputation second to none 

 in Cumberland. In the south-west, packs 

 hunted in Ennerdale and Eskdale, and in the 

 east, at Alston, but they do not appear to have 

 been as well established as those which 

 hunted in the great plain of the county. 

 We believe that Mr. Stordy's was the last 

 pack to go out of existence. 



It is little wonder that foulmarts have 

 become very scarce in the county when we 

 consider the numbers killed during one hunt- 

 ing season. It is said that the late Mr. Isaac 

 Stordy was responsible for an average of 

 fifteen a year with the Thurstonfield pack 

 alone. Mr. Coward, a notable sportsman in 

 Carlisle, could remember a ' kill ' of thirty- 

 nine in one season in the neighbourhood of 

 that city. If we are to believe reports from 

 Wigton and Aspatria, the destruction of foul- 

 marts in these districts was fairly equal in 

 proportion. But the authorities are not quite 

 agreed on the actual causes of the scarcity. 

 The late Rev. H. A. Macpherson, who 

 has collected much valuable information on 

 the natural history of the animal, inclined to 

 the belief that it was the introduction of the 

 steel trap and the employment of professional 

 trappers in game preserves. 1 On the other 

 hand, Mr. Henry Howard was of opinion 

 ' that the great number of rival packs which 

 were kept for some years between Carlisle 

 and Silloth must very considerably have re- 

 duced their number, as, from what I could 

 learn, very few days passed without one or 



1 Fauna of Lakeland, pp. 27-35. 



454 



