A HISTORY OF DURHAM 



FOX-HUNTING 



It seems fairly certain that the first pack of 

 foxhounds in the county of Durham was kept 

 at Streatlam between 1730 and 1740 by 

 Mr. Bowes. These hounds were originally the 

 property of Mr. Thomas Fownes of Steeple- 

 ton in Dorset, by whom they were sold to 

 ' Mr. Bowes of Streatlam in Yorkshire.' l Now 

 although the bulk of the Bowes estates, which 

 have now passed to the Earls of Strathmore, lie 

 to the south of the Tees, Streatlam itself is' in 

 Durham, and as the hounds must have been 

 kennelled there, they can fairly be counted as a 

 Durham pack. On the first day they were 

 taken out hunting they ran their fox 'into a 

 nobleman's park I believe Lord Darlington's 

 which was full of all kinds of riot, 2 and it had 

 been customary to stop all hounds before they 

 could enter it.' * 



Unfortunately no record of these hounds exists 

 at Streatlam at the present day ; and but little 

 information can be gleaned respecting a pack of 

 presumed foxhounds which was undoubtedly 

 kept at Raby, only three miles away, about the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, by the Duke 

 of Cleveland and Southampton, the uncle of the 

 second Earl of Darlington. But though so little 

 is definitely known about these packs, one feels 

 the greater pleasure in rescuing that little from 

 oblivion. 



It is even doubtful whether the palm for 

 priority of fox-hunting in Durham should not 

 be awarded to the inhabitants of a sea-port, 

 which few people nowadays would credit with 

 much sympathy with the chase, although the 

 enterprise of its honest burgesses has been 

 obscured by the glamour of such famous names 

 as Lambton and Darlington. 



According to the Newcastle Journal of No- 

 vember, 1765, we learn as follows : 



We hear from Sunderland that an assembly is held 

 there during the winter season on every Thursday 

 fortnight, and that the gentlemen of the independent 

 hunt, every Monday fortnight hunt the fox till 

 Candlemas : after which they then for certain change 

 it to Monday and Thursday weekly till Ladyday. 4 



It should be noted that in the above para- 

 graph, the editor does not refer to the ' inde- 



1 Anecdotes respecting Cranbourne Chase, by the Rev. 

 William Chafin. 



' In the oldest English treatise on hunting, The 

 Master of Game (1413), the author tells us that when 

 a hound chased a rabbit in covert he was to be rated 

 with a shout of 'war ryote war,' for no other wild 

 beast in England was called ' ryote ' save the coney.' 

 The expression had evidently come to have its modern 

 and more extended meaning in 1730. 



* Anecdotes respecting Cranbourne Chase. 



4 Richardson, Local Historian's Table Book (New 

 castle, 1843). 



pendent hunt ' as an innovation, but rather as an 

 established institution ; and the sport that it 

 afforded for its supporters appears at times to have 

 been of a truly remarkable description. Thus 



February zoth 1770. The gentlemen of the Sun- 

 derland Hunt turned out a bag-fox at Newbottle ; 

 just as the dogs went off a hare started which they 

 killed at view ; they fell on the foxe's scent again and 

 after a chase of 1 2 miles he lept down a lime-kiln and 

 crept out at the eye, when the dogs took up the scent 

 again, he soon after took through a conduit and 

 eluded them for some time, but being again closely 

 pressed he lept down a rock and took the river, but 

 not being pursued he soon returned and was again 

 taken up by the dogs, and after another chase for 

 near 14 miles he ran on board a ship at Ayres Quay, 

 where he was taken alive by the sailors/ 



This must indeed have been a stout-hearted 

 bagman, to have survived a run of 26 miles, a 

 lime-kiln, a conduit, and a (literally) 'navigable 

 arm of the sea ' ! Let us sincerely trust that 

 the sailors were as kind to him as Jack usually is 

 to dumb animals, and that after delivering him 

 from his persecutors, they eventually restored 

 him to well-earned liberty. 



THE RABY, MR. CRADOCK'S, AND 

 LORD ZETLAND'S FOXHOUNDS 



We must now retrace our steps to Raby, 

 where we first find mention of an orthodox 

 pack of foxhounds in 1787, instituted in that 

 year by the second Earl of Darlington, for 

 the amusement of his son Lord Barnard, who 

 succeeded to the title five years later, and, at 

 all events in sporting matters, is always known 

 as the 'famous' Lord Darlington. History does 

 not relate whence Lord Darlington obtained the 

 material for the foundation of his pack, and it is 

 pretty evident that at the outset this was of 

 rather a rough-cast description, which confined 

 its operations to the immediate neighbourhood 

 of Raby. But in a very few seasons Lord 

 Darlington succeeded in creating a first-rate 

 level lot of hounds, while his sphere of action 

 extended over a huge district stretching from the 

 south of Yorkshire almost to Northumberland, 

 and including the Badsworth, and most of the 

 present York and Ainsty countries, the whole 

 of the existing Bedale and Zetland territories, 

 and practically all the area now hunted by the 

 Hurworth and North and South Durham 

 Hounds. It of course goes without saying that 

 this cannot be termed Lord Darlington's ' coun- 

 try ' in the modern acceptance of the term. At 

 the beginning of the eighteenth century, sub- 

 scription packs of hounds with their rigidly 



6 Ibid. 



388 



