UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Hacking Home
By RONALD F. GUNN (University of Edinburgh)
THE dingy red-brick cottages flung back the clatter of Silvertail's hoof-beats as we walked slowly through the mining village on our way home from the meet. A child, playing in the gutter beneath a flickering street-lamp, gazed at us in wide-eyed wonder ; farther along the road a wireless was blaring
dance music through an open cottage door. Down a side street we could see the silhouette of the colliery gantry. The men were just coming off shift. They passed us in little batches of twos and threes, their faces grimy with coal-dust and their mess-cans gleaming in the lamplight. It seemed to grow lighter as we left the village and the dance music behind. A faint mist was creeping across the fields, and the harsh outline of the coal bings was softened by the early winter twilight. We could hear the noisy cawing of a colony of rooks as they setiled down to roost in the elm trees round Hareshaw House. Many years ago Hareshaw was famous for its pheasants— and for its foxes too—for the Laird never allowed his keepers to shoot a fox. Today there are no pheasants, the Laird is dead, and HareshaW House itself, after a chequered history through the war, stands empty and neglected. Only the foxes and rooks remain.
The fate of Hareshaw is typical. Over a hundred years ago the Fame (in whose country lay Hareshaw House) was considered to be one of the best packs in the kingdom. Then came the Industrial Revolution. One by one the great houses and the county families which had formed the backbone of the hunt were swallowed up by the advancing waves of mines and factories. New towns sprang up almost overnight as industry expanded into the countryside. For a time men thought that fox-hunting would die out. But they were wrong. Fox-hunting survived, and it was the fox-hunters themselves who suffered a drastic change. A new aristocracy came into being —the aristocracy of wealth. The new country gentry—the lawyers, the business-men and later the factory-owners and the industrialists —adopted the sports of the old blood aristocracy and made fox- hunting their winter pastime.
Today the Fame hunt three days a week. The Tuesday country lies in the rolling moors and fir plantations of the west. The field is small, and is for the most part composed of farmers—for two world wars have brought about another change in fox-hunting society, and the farmer has come into his own. The sport is not good by Shire standards, for the moors with their bogs and rough going call for careful riding, and there is an ever-increasing amount of wire. But anyone who appreciates scenery and who likes to watch hounds working at close quarters will enjoy a day on these moors, for the pace is slow and the views are rewarding.
The Thursday meet is held within reach of one of the large towns. It is a concession to modern economic conditions, and is more for the purpose of getting a good cap—for tunning a pack of hounds is lin expensive affair today, even for a committee—than for showing good sport. The field is large, and is mainly composed of riders on hired horses. Each riding-school owner has his own little flock of charges, most of them children on ponies, and there is a certain amount of passive hostility between the patrons of the different establishments. The meet itself is held in the grounds of some house which has remained untouched by advancing ribbon develop- ment. Local Press-photographers turn out in force ; there is usually a large crowd of spectators, and long lines of cars stand on either side of the drive. The sport is invariably poor, for the grounds are heavily wooded and enclosed. The day is spent in hunting the fox from one plantation to another, and there is seldom a run of more than two or three fields. Nevertheless the majority of the riders go home satisfied if they have caught a glimpse of the quarry, and return again the following Thursday to spend another day on the edge of some blind covert listening to the meaningless noise of the huntsmen and the hounds and (which isinore important to the hunt
treasurer) to place their contributions in the cap. i The Saturday country lies midway -between the moors and the Industrial towns. It is a strange mixture of the old and the new. Mansion and coal-mine stand side by side, yet before the war this mixture used to provide the best hunting-country in the district Even today it never fails to yield a run, although foxes are seldom killed. The meet is held at a cross-roads, a railway station or a mining village—chosen for convenience and not for beauty, for the men who hunt the Saturday country are again (like the majority of Tuesday's field) hard-working farmers who dress plainly, ride good sturdy horses suited for the type of land which they have to hunt, and who have no desire to pose for the photographers.
Then came the Second World War. The Fame were able to meet only one day a week, and they had to hunt within reach of the large towns in order to survive at all. For six years the Saturday country was neglected. Foxes multiplied rapidly, as the occasional shooting drives organised by the farmers were practically useless. By the end of the war their numbers had increased alarmingly, and they were difficult to hunt as they did not confine themselves to the open country but lived in the disused workings below the coal bings. There are even stories of hounds which ventured to follow being savaged to death. The Fame relies on the farmers whose lands it hunts over for most of its support and funds, and no farmer will help to maintain a pack which does not keep the number of foxes down. Hunting the district only one day a week, the Fame seldom make a kill—mainly because all the foxes go to ground in the dis- used mine workings—and already the poultry-keepers are shooting foxes at sight and are threatening to put down poison if the situation does not improve. Every year the land itself becomes more difficult to hunt over. New mines are being worked, match-box towns are springing up in what, were once fields, and more and more roads and railways are criss-crossing the green patches. Soon it will become impossible to hunt the Saturday country, and the Fame will have to content themselves with the hill foxes of the moors. After a struggle of over a hundred years, the Fame will have to yield the best part of their country to the coal-mines and factories, and if the industrial advance continues at its present steady rate they will face extinction within the next half-century.
Silvertail stirred uneasily at the whistle of a passing train. I wondered what the old Laird would say if he could see his beloved countryside today changed almost out of recognition in thE name of progress—coal bings instead of woodlands, works instead of parks, the hunt ball held in the local Co-operative hall instead of in a country mansion, Hareshaw House an empty ruin with a sprawling mining village outside its broken-down walls. If the dingy red-brick cottages and the wireless blaring out dance music represent progress, I am sure the old Laird would have none of it. An owl hooted in the spinney. Silvertail lengthened his stride. We were nearing home. A goods train rattled across the points before plunging into the tunnel below us. I turned in the saddle and looked behind me. The smokeless chimneys of Hareshaw House were silhouetted against the distant glow of the blast furnaces.
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