THE ESKDALE.

“A RELIC OF THE PAST”

THE ESKDALE FOXHOUNDS.

This pack is no longer in existence. Owing to the scarcity of foxes and other causes, it was dispersed a year or two ago. I gather from MR. W. SCARTH DIXON’S excellent book, “In the North Countrie,” that “The Eskdale can lay claim to having been established early in this century. The late MR. PETERS kept Hounds at Handale Abbey, and afterwards at Larpool Hall, and hunted what is now called the Eskdale country. They have undergone considerable vicissitudes, and once, owing to the paucity of foxes, were converted, for the nonce, into Harriers. It is a fine wild country which these hounds hunted, and it holds a capital scent, and although by no means what a Leicestershire man would admire, it is a capital country for sport were it not for one drawback, viz.: the too frequent recurrence of blank days.”

In this wild, and in many parts picturesque country, the sportsman is rarely out of sight of the sea to the east, while to the north, west, and south lie the rolling moorlands and the wooded “dales.” Many capital runs have been made by these Hounds, one in particular, which lasted six hours and twenty minutes, and though a good part of it was slow, yet some of it was very fast, and it is pretty certain the Hounds stuck to the same fox—an excellent reason given being that it is questionable if there was another in the country over which they ran.

After MR. PETERS’ time the country was only hunted by some of the scratch packs in the neighbouring “dales.” About 1867 or 1868 MR. HERBERT RASTALL got some Hounds from Lealholm, and commenced to hunt the country, which is only small in extent, touching the “Cleveland” in the north, and extending a little to the south of Whitby. MR. RASTALL carried on the Hounds for a few seasons, when MR. MARR took them for a season or two. After this they were managed by a committee, and afterwards MR. PARRINGTON took the management. DICK SMALLWOOD hunted the Hounds for over seven seasons, until they were given up.

MR. W. SCARTH DIXON, writing before the Hounds were dispersed, says: “It is a pity that the Eskdale should receive such half hearted support, for it is a good sporting country. A famous one in which to educate a young hunter, and the farmers are foxhunters to a man.”