A WEEK AT MELTON 27 



and he will remember the picture of the Melton 

 man in a flowered dressing-gown leaning over the 

 banisters with the order, " Hey, Johnson, breakfast 

 in half-an-hour, and order me a train. I'll hunt with 

 Sir Bache." 



The flourishing town we now see was little more 

 than a village until Mr. Cecil Forester, drawn by its 

 convenience for hunting alike with Mr. Meynell's 

 Hounds and the Belvoir, went there for the hunting 

 season. When once this discovery was made the 

 growth of the place was rapid, and before many years 

 Melton became the chief hunting centre of England ; 

 and from that day to this there has been a steady 

 flow of fashion and wealth to it. For, apart from its 

 attractions as a sporting centre, it is a pleasant town 

 enough, finely situated and embosomed in a rich vale 

 through which flows the river Wreake. It has a fine 

 church, the tower of which, as Nimrod observed, " is 

 often a grateful sight to a returning sportsman on a 

 beaten horse." 



For a long time, indeed. Melton was a place where 

 men only gathered for hunting. " The grand feature 

 of Melton Mowbray," says the writer quoted above, 

 " is the Old Club." This house has long ceased to 

 exist as a club, and the building has now been turned 

 into a shop. One of the chief features of Melton 

 architecture are the handsome hunting-boxes which 

 have been built on the oustkirts of the town, and are 

 comfortable but unpretentious places, many of them 

 only differing from suburban houses elsewhere by the 

 handsome ranges of stabling attached to them. For 

 however modestly the owner may be lodged, he is sure 

 to see that his horses have spacious and comfortable 

 ranges of boxes. Some of these houses are to let 

 every year, others again belong to those regular visitors 



