32 HUNTING IN MANY COUNTRIES. 



to certain places west of Lanohester, and vice versa, tliey now 

 more frequently cross the valley, and they are nothing like so 

 numerous as they once were. At the Durham end of the 

 valley, Sniperley Moss, some plantations near Ushaw College, 

 and Hill Top are the chief coverts ; but Hill Top, formerly a 

 great stronghold, is much thinner than it was a few years ago, 

 and not so sure a find. Opposite Hill Top, on the other side 

 of the Browney, which hereabouts has assumed the proportions 

 of a river, are Lord Durham's Langley coverts — where many 

 big bags have been made by Royalty in comparatively recent 

 years— and west of Langley, Burnhopeiside, formerly the 

 property of the late Mr. George Fawcett, of coursing 

 celebrity, and of which the late Mr. Alan Greenwoll, of 

 Durham, for many years secretary of the hunt, had 

 the shooting, and strictly preserved foxes for a long period. 

 Burnhopeside is a famous covert, where foxes are always bred, 

 and to which they run from many parts of the hunt, and it is 

 snugly placed on the side of a hill, with the earths well secluded. 

 At Greenwell Ford, a mile and a half west of Burnhopeside, 

 there are young plantations which doubtless will hold foxes 

 shortly; but Hollybush, a whin covert and a certain find for 

 many years, has been ploughed out. One other fine covert in 

 this neighbourhood, midway between Greenwell Ford and 

 Gladdow, is Rackwoodside, a 20-acre whin on a steep hillside, 

 where the field can stand on the top and watch every fox that 

 moves. Probably the average North Durham man would con- 

 sider Rackwoodside the best covert in the hunt, and I am 

 not sure that the claim would not be justified. Foxes are 

 always bred there, and I am inclined to think that it affords 

 (at the present time) better sport than any other covert one 

 could name. 



West of Lanchester are the Greencroft coverts, and further 

 west Iveston Gill, which is, however, so remote that it is 

 seldom drawn. But at times it has afforded a good hunt, and 

 I have in mind a very fine hunt from it in the 'seventies. 

 Hounds ran a fox there from the Tower Wood at Greencroft 

 which went to ground. Hounds were being called away when 

 a fresh fox was viewed, and this one hounds ran to Bogle Hole, 

 How ens Gill, Sheepwalks, Butsfield, Broomshields, and thence 

 left-handed to Low Mill, where they killed. This hunt was 



