226 COURSING 



Chippenham field to what they used to be, and I do not know 

 that the club ever used the Six Mile Bottom or Lord Gerard's 

 ground where the Newmarket open meetings now take place. 



The Stockbridge Meeting is usually held in the early days of 

 October, and if the weather is fine (which by the way it generally 

 is) no more enjoyable small fixture occurs in the year's Calendar. 

 The stakes consist of a Produce Stakes for dogs and bitches, the 

 Stockbridge Cup for all ages, and the Longstock, Andover, and 

 Danebury Stakes of lesser importance. Headquarters are at 

 the Grosvenor Arms Hotel at Stockbridge, where the club use 

 the same room which has served for the Bibury racing club 

 three months before, and where the party is always jovial and 

 pleasant, if not of very large dimensions. The ground coursed 

 over belongs to Mr. Joshua East, of Longstock House, himself 

 an old courser of note, and a most enthusiastic sportsman, who, 

 despite the fact that he is an octogenarian, still rides with the 

 beat all day and continues to direct all the arrangements. The 

 meet is usually at Vicar's Cross, hard by the pretty Danebury 

 racecourse, and operations are conducted in a circle round 

 the copse-crowned hill of Money Bunt, so well known as a 

 landmark in the Tedworth Hunt, which serves so efficiently as 

 shelter for the Longstock hares. 



The drive or walk up to Vicar's Cross on a pleasant 

 autumnal morning is a thing to be enjoyed by London sports- 

 men, and a stranger coming upon the scene, and accustomed 

 to other coursing grounds, could hardly fail to note the 

 striking difference between this and the usual state of affairs 

 at a coursing meet. No cardsellers are here, no itinerant 

 vendors of ' Ormskirk gingerbread,' or other well-known coursing 

 viands, no loud-voiced bookmakers vociferating the odds on 

 the coming event, no miscellaneous crowd of ' hangers-on ' or 

 ' pickers-up,' but, instead, a group of gentlemen, gaitered and 

 knickerbockered to their hearts' content, some mounted and 

 some on foot, and attended only by their servants with the 

 dogs in charge. 



Veritably a private day it seems, and yet by the time the 



