236 THE NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE HOUNDS. 



may say, speaking generally, that no ladies enjoyed bunt- 

 ing more thoroughly, and none knew more about it, than 

 the ladies of the Davenport family. 



The two Misses Adderley, of Barlaston Hall — after- 

 wards Mrs. Andrew Corbet and Mrs. John Broughton — 

 were well-known performers across country in the early 

 days of which we are now speaking, and had not much 

 to learn from any of the sterner sex. Both were admir- 

 able horsewomen, and until they married, and gradually 

 gave up the sport, no one went better or saw more 

 sport with the North Stafford Hounds than the ladies of 

 Barlaston Hall. 



We have elsewhere mentioned their brother, Mr. Ralph 

 Thomas Adderley (better known as "Tom "Adderley), who 

 kept a pack of harriers at Barlaston on his own account, 

 and who for twenty years or more was in the full swing of 

 most of the sport that was going on in North Staffordshire. 



Then in the olden days, i.e. in the fifties and sixties, the 

 held used often to be graced with the presence of Ladies 

 Gertrude and Adelaide Talbot, who frequently came out 

 on the Draycot and Sandon side with their father — then 

 Lord Talbot — from Ingestre ; and although these ladies 

 were not such constant or such devoted followers as some 

 of these we have just mentioned, yet they were thoroughly 

 graduated in the school of sport, and always went well. 

 Their father, Lord Talbot, afterwards the eighteenth Earl 

 of Shrewsbury, was a well-known and determined rider to 

 hounds, and on his Irish horse Blarney, which carried him 

 well for many seasons, used often to show the way across 

 the North Stafford country. 



Coming to more recent times, no one who knows 

 anything of fox-hunting in North Staffordshire upwards 

 of twenty years ago, more especially with reference 

 to the lady element in the Hunt, can help thinking 

 of Lady Florence Chaplin, who for several years during 

 her brother's Mastership was a constant and accom- 

 plished follower of his hounds. Up to the time of 

 her marriage, in 1876, she was seldom absent from the 



