THE BRAES OF DERWENT COUNTRY. 49 



go far east and south of the river Derwent, whereas in 

 earlier days they hunted a large tract of country which 

 included Ravensworth, Taniield, Beamish, and Urpeth, and 

 which now contains too' many collieries for sport, though in 

 an ordinary way Mr. Priestman takes hounds to Beamish Hall 

 once a year, and always finds foxes — ^which are difficult to 

 hunt on account of the surroundings. Much of this country 

 belonged at one time to the North Durham, and I have seen 

 Mr. Maynard's hounds draw TIavensworth, Urpeth, and 

 Beamish, and run to the Causey coverts near Tanfield ; but 

 some five and twenty years ago a passenger line from Birtley 

 (on the main London and Edinburgh railway) to Consett was 

 opened, and the Masters O'f the North Durham and Braes of 

 Derwenti agreed that this sihould be the boundary line between 

 the two hujitsi. A hundred years ago all thisi country was part 

 of Mr. Ralph Ijarabton'g hunt, his northern kennelsi being in 

 Lambton Park, not three miles from Urpeth, and foxes used to 

 travel between Lambton and the immediate neighbourhood and 

 the lower end of the Derwent valley. Indeed the late Mr. John 

 Taylor Ramsey, who had seventy years' experience of hunting 

 in this district, and who died a few years ago, when not far 

 short of ninety years of age, used to tell me how he was 

 blooded by Ralph Lambton in Axwell Park with a fox which 

 had been brought from the neighbourhood of Penshaw, and 

 was killed by the lake at Axwell. No doubt the country was 

 entirely open in those pre-railway days, when the coal industry 

 was in its infancy; but the face of the country has been 

 greatly changed between the places named, though Mr. 

 Rogerson only gave up drawing round about Penshaw a few 

 years ago. Before describing the coverts and the present hunt- 

 ing area of the Braes of Derwent country it will perhaps be 

 as well to say something as to the history of the pack, and I 

 may at once state that an impenetrable veil of mystery 

 svirrounds the early hunting of the district. We know that a 

 Mr. Humble, of Eltringham, had a trencher-fed pack of fox- 

 hounds towards the close of the eighteenth century, and we 

 also know that a Mr. Humble was hunting the country when 

 Sir Matthew White Ridley was hunting on the northern bank 

 of the Tyne. Now, Sir Matthew's pack was, according to all 

 available authorities, established in 1818, and he hunted 



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