THE BRAES OF DERWENT COUNTRY. 59 



a forest, owned by the Crown, and administered by an official 

 who had an enormous opinion of himself. It would be possible 

 to name many people who afforded Surtees some of the pecu- 

 liarities of a number of his best-known characters, and among 

 these there would not be a single name which has appeared 

 in the recent correspondence, but, as I have already mentioned, 

 it is any reasonable odds that all the best figures in the series 

 of novels were of compound character, and my views would 

 merely be those which were adopted by residents of the locality 

 in which Surte.es lived at the time the novels v/ere published. 

 About the Spa I may say that in the 'thirties of the last century 

 Shotley Spa was opened, a hotel built, and some attempt made 

 to establish an inland watering place. It came to- little, how- 

 ever, but that Surtees got his idea of a spa from that fact is 

 exceedingly probable. Also it is probable that many of the 

 scenes described in connection with Jorrocks had a local 

 original, and notably the run to Ongar Castle, for the bath 

 scene is said to have taken place at Seaton Delaval, on the 

 Northumberland coast, and less than twenty miles from Ham- 

 sterley, and there is a legend that hounds — what hounds I do 

 not know — ran from the Derwent Valley to the Tyne, crossed 

 the river, and ran to the sea at the very place. 



The Castleside pack had plenty of country — more, indeed, 

 than they could hunt properly, considering how small the 

 establishment was. They could go west as far as the moors, 

 and by arrangement they drew the Woodlands coverts. Lord 

 Bute's, Sheiep walks, and other places in the Durham County 

 hunt during the three alternate weeks that the county pack 

 were at Sedgefield. Mr. Richardson used to speak of having 

 had the best sport from Sheepwalks, and no doubt this portion 

 of the Durham hunt was then very wild and open and full of 

 foxes. Wire fencing was unknown and foxes were held sacred 

 by the farmers, who dearly loved a hunt. Many of the best 

 coverts — and the shooting at Lord Bute's for a long period — 

 were owned by Mr. Richardson's father, who' then occasionally 

 resided at Woodlands, so there was no trouble about stopping. 

 All the same, the twO' best hunts which occurred during the 

 life of the pack both had their beginning in the Derwent 

 Valley. The first of these began at the Sneep, and hounds 

 actually ran to the steep hill above Hexham, where they 



