THE NORTH DURHAM COUNTRY. 41 



number. I have even known hunting men use this train 

 for a Witton Gilbert meet, and to be unboxing while hounds 

 were hunting a fox in Hill Top covert, but Hill Top was a 

 quick find, and the risk of being left very great, so tlia custom 

 never became general. Witton Gilbert, it should be ex- 

 plained, is the station south of Lanchester and four miles 

 away, and the train was quite ten minutes later in arriving 

 there. Why it should have been the case that almost every 

 house in the country districts of North Durham contained 

 hunting people two generations ago and why an almost exactly 

 opposite state of affairs prevails at the present moment is 

 one of those curious facts which occasionally present them- 

 selves and can hardly be explained, but it is none the less 

 true, and thus it is that fields in this particular country are 

 in these days hardly a fourth the size of those I first knew. 

 But beyond the absence of hunting people from a number of 

 country houses there are two other reaisons, one of which is 

 that after Mr. Harvey's retirement much of his following 

 turned to the Tynedale and Morpeth for sport, and the other 

 that Sunderland hunting people now go to the Zetland and 

 the South Durham more frequently than to the North 

 Durham. This is greatly due to the fact that the trains 

 between Sunderland and Lanchester are most inconvenient 

 from a hunting point of view, while to the two hunts further 

 south they are so numerous that if one is missed another can 

 be utilised. A third reason is that whereas a great number 

 of hunting people were resident in Newcastle and its suburbs 

 diiring Mr. Harvey's mastership, many of the hunting 

 folk who are connected with the commercialism of Newcastle 

 now live in the Tyne Valley, and the upshot is that 

 the Tynedale fields are very considerably larger than 

 those I can first remember, while in the Braes of Derwent 

 country the increase has been even more marked, so much 

 so, indeed, that I have counted 120 riders at a meet which I 

 can remember attended by half a dozen only. But the 

 western country of the North Durham is as good as ever it 

 was from a scenting point of view ; it contains very little wire, 

 and if there are not so many foxes as there were when hounds 

 met so frequently at Browney Bank there are still quite 

 enough for sport, for there were far too many some years ago, 



