Author Ron Black…In the north-eastern corner of the English Lake District there is a valley known as Mardale. This secluded valley contains a lake, under which rest the remains of a submerged village. The occupants of the village were shepherds who tended the local sheep high on the unforgiving fells surrounding the valley. Once a year they would meet to exchange strayed sheep, and from these humble beginnings The Mardale Shepherds Meet—best-known of all the meets of the Lakeland Fell foxhound packs—began.
It is often said that the origin of the meet is “older than the memory of man.” The introduction of the Ullswater Foxhounds increased the popularity of the meet, which soon attracted a much larger following than just the local shepherds. In the evening a public house called The Dun Bull was the venue for song and laughter. In time, The Mardale Shepherds Meet achieved worldwide fame.
Finally in the 1930s Manchester obtained permission to dam the valley in order to obtain water supplies for the city some seventy miles away. Everywhere was demolished, and the valley was flooded.
Joseph William Greenhow (1901–1953) was a man of Mardale who followed the hounds. As his daughter-in-law Trudie Greenhow tells it, “They were such plain and simple folk with no evil in them, they would be so naive and innocent in their own little valley and annihilated by the folk from the big city who robbed them of their peace, tranquillity and innocence.”
Foxhunting Life, through the courtesy of author Ron Black, whose great-uncles attended the meet for a number of years is pleased to bring you the The Mardale Hunt, the first book ever written about this famous meet. It will be published in a series of instalments which you are free to download as PDF files.
The manuscript, checked for accuracy by the local historical society, uses material written at the time to try to recreate The Mardale Shepherd’s Meet, the followers, their hunts, and their merrymaking.
The first instalment will be posted on November 20, because the Mardale Shepherds Meet was always the Saturday closest to that date. We think you will be moved by this touching account of life, loss, and hunting in the rugged fells.
“I am a native Lakelander with roots going back to 1700,” writes author Ron Black, “the fourth generation to follow hounds, with ancestors who stood on the cold tops at dawn, moved the heavy Lakeland stone to free trapped terriers, and also carried the horn on occasions….Hunting will not come back in the foreseeable future, perhaps not at all, but for three hundred years hunting and the church were the central thread to many communities. This is a part of the story.”
Posted November 4, 2011
…in the spectacular Lake District of England