THE COUNTRY AND THE HORSE 

 REQUIRED. 



In the time of the first Lord Yarborough the country 

 extended over the whole of the present Brocklesby and 

 South Wold countries, part of the Burton and part of the 

 North Nottinghamshire, and Lord Yarborough used to go 

 down into both those districts for a month at a time to 

 hunt the woodlands. There were, as he told his grandson, 

 when he began hunting, only two or three fences between 

 Horncastle and Brigg, a distance of at least thirty miles, 

 so most of the country must have been either woodlands,, 

 rabbit-warrens, or sheep-walks, and very little of the land 

 could have been cultivated. Since that day it has been 

 converted into one of the finest agricultural districts in 

 England. No doubt in those days they adopted the plan 

 of meeting at daybreak, and dragging up to their fox by 

 following the line of his nightly rambles to where he lay 

 down to digest his prey. 



The boundaries at the middle of the nineteenth century 

 were : on the north, the Humber ; on the east, the North 

 Sea ; on the west, the Trent ; and on the south a wavy 

 line drawn from Gainsborough, by Springthorpe, Aisby, 

 Willoughton, Snitterby, Bishop's ISTorton, Glentham, Toft 

 Newton, Middle Easen, Lissington, Legsby, Hainton, 

 Brough-on-Bain, Welton, and Louth, and thence up the 

 Louth Canal to Tetney Haven. Koughly speaking, the 

 country was forty-five miles from east to west, and twenty- 

 five miles from north to south. But since that time 

 some of the country has been lent to the Burton and the 

 South Wold, the former hunting the Kirton and Howsham 



