Horse & Hound
The Littered Fields of Ledbury: A Helmet-Cam View
The Ledbury hunting country is legendary—and legendarily terrifying. We accompany Leslie Wylie’s story with this helmet-cam video of British eventer Alice Pearson midst a large field of riders, passing horseless riders in field after field, until she takes a hard tumble herself. Posted February 21, 2016
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Meeting Martha, Part I: How I Got Invited to Foxhunt With British Royalty
"Who was this woman...who could manage such a cool, yet hot-blooded stare?" / Photo by EquusPix PhotographyIt all started a couple months ago when a friend posited the classic ice-breaker question, “If you could have lunch with anyone in the world, who would it be?”
Bypassing all sensible responses—the President, the Pope, Peyton Manning—I skipped straight to a personage whom I knew virtually nothing about: The Lady Martha Sitwell.
Ever since we ran this photograph of Martha in a 2013 Horse Nation story about sidesaddle foxhunting (“The Craic Heard Round the World“), I’ve been transfixed. Who was this woman who, despite being mud-splattered, mascara-smeared, and soaked to the bone by icy Irish rain, could manage such a simultaneously cool yet hot-blooded stare?
Everyone Knows Bundles Murdock, But She Knows Everyone Else!
Catherine “Bundles” Murdock is the lady to seek out when paying your cap at Orange County. Be sure to observe proper protocol by enclosing your check in an envelope with your name and address. Ms. Murdock is one field secretary who knows her protocol! / Douglas Lees photoIn a recent article in the Loudoun Times-Mirror, Billie Van Pay wrote, “Almost everyone in horse country knows Catherine ‘Bundles’ C. Murdock, a fourth-generation member of a family well-known for its community leadership and for helping make the area known for its foxhunting.”
Indeed, Murdock is a long-time member of the Middleburg, Virginia community and the Orange County Hounds, serving as honorary secretary, field secretary, and road whip. And “almost everyone in horse country” does know her. But Murdock knows everyone else. Like Barbara and George Bush, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Queen Elizabeth to name a few.
Murdock was born in New York, but Middleburg has always been home. Her grandfather William Philander “Pappy” Hulbert came to Middleburg more than one hundred years ago, and her mother grew up on the family farm, Stonehedge, before her.
Foxhunting in the “Garden of Ireland”
West Wicklow Senior Master and huntsman Rupert Macauley takes hounds to covert. / Noel Mullins photo
Well-known hunting author Willie Poole once said, “There is no landscape in the world that can’t be enhanced by a pack of hounds.” County Wicklow, known colloquially as the Garden of Ireland, has a reputation for beauty quite on its own. Add the foxhounds to a landscape of blue skies, sheep grazing in green fields, extensive plantations, and snow-capped hills, and the image describes perfectly my day with hounds from Pat Kavanagh’s Hampton Lodge Equestrian Centre at Brittas.
A Foxhunter Turns 100!
On the happy occasion of Mr. I. Tucker Burr, III’s one hundredth birthday on Thursday, July 27, 2017, we republish the story of his raucous escapade in 1936 when he and a schoolmate ran his mother’s Norfolk Hunt foxhounds on a drag hunt through Harvard Yard.
Mr. Burr, you and your friend Leverett Saltonstall, Jr. were a proper pair of rascals, and we all wish we could have been there for the fun. Happy birthday, sir.The Leverett Saltonstall Family in the Norfolk Hunt field, 1930. Leverett (top hat) was governor of Massachusetts and U.S. Senator, three terms each. Leverett, Jr is just left of his father.
In the dark of night on April 16, 1936, the atmosphere of refinement within the hallowed walls of Harvard Yard was suddenly shattered by foxhounds in full cry. A candid confession to the affair is buried in the pages of The Norfolk Hunt: One Hundred Years of Sport, published in 1995 to commemorate Norfolk’s centennial. The statute of limitations having long expired, we can confidentially out the two students who organized and carried out the caper: Leverett Saltonstall, Jr. and I. Tucker Burr, III.
Tuck’s mother, Mrs. I. Tucker (Evelyn Thayer) Burr, Jr. was MFH and huntsman of the Norfolk Hunt at the time of the incident. Whether she was a willing accessory we’ll leave to the reader to decide. Young Leverett whipped-in to her from time to time. Leverett’s father, who traced his roots directly to the Mayflower, was Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, soon to be governor for three terms, and finally U.S. Senator for three elected terms.
The Harvard Yard Run
The Leverett Saltonstall Family in the Norfolk Hunt field, 1930. Leverett (top hat) was governor of Massachusetts and U.S. Senator, three terms each. Leverett, Jr is just left of his father.
In the dark of night on April 16, 1936, the atmosphere of refinement within the ancient walls of Harvard Yard was suddenly shattered by foxhounds in full cry. A candid confession to the affair is buried in the pages of The Norfolk Hunt: One Hundred Years of Sport, published in 1995 to commemorate Norfolk’s centennial. The statute of limitations having long expired, we can confidentially out the two students who organized and carried out the caper: Leverett Saltonstall, Jr. and I. Tucker Burr, III.
Tuck’s mother, Mrs. I. Tucker (Evelyn Thayer) Burr, Jr. was MFH and huntsman of the Norfolk Hunt at the time of the incident. Whether she was a willing accessory we’ll leave to the reader to decide. Young Leverett whipped-in to her from time to time. Leverett’s father, who traced his roots directly to the Mayflower, was Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, soon to be governor for three terms, and finally U.S. Senator for three elected terms.
Up the Creek
During a joint meet with the Windy Hollow Hunt (NY), Codie Hayes of the Golden’s Bridge Hounds (NY) made the ultimate huntsman’s sacrifice to encourage reluctant hounds to cross the creek. Did it work? We don’t even want to ask. What more can a huntsman do? Posted February 4, 2016
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Foxhunter Seeks Seat in U.S. House of Representatives
Joe Whited (right) and the author in the Old Dominion field / Michelle OHanlon Arnold photo
A foxhunter and conservationist with an impressive background in foreign affairs is seeking the Republican nomination for Virginia's Fifth Congressional District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Joe Whited, thirty-six, has mounted a campaign for the Republican nomination, one of four vying for the seat being vacated by Representative Robert Hurt (R). Whited wears the colors of the Old Dominion Hounds (VA) and helps run the club's annual point-to-point. His first race, however, will be purely political—the Republican primary in April.
Virginia’s Fifth District is the Commonwealth’s largest. The pie-shaped wedge includes much of Virginia hunt country, including territory of Piedmont, Orange County, Warrenton, Casanova, Old Dominion, Rappahannock, Thornton Hill-Fort Valley, Bull Run, Keswick, Farmington, Deep Run, Oak Ridge, Stonewall, Bedford, and Red Oak in Virginia, just north of Sedgefield and Red Mountain in North Carolina.
Old North Bridge Hounds in the Footprints of History II
The Old North Bridge Hounds meet at The Old Manse, home of Ralph Waldo Emerson and his forebears, adjacent to the North Bridge, their namesake. / Elizabeth Goldsmith photo
In an earlier story, we read of the Old North Bridge Hounds (MA) meeting at historic Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in nearby Sudbury. This drag pack, established in 1969 and recognized by the MFHA in 1973, boasts connections back to Colonial days, and hounds hunt routinely across some of our nation’s most hallowed ground.
The hunt was organized in Concord, Massachusetts, the town that inhospitably hosted several companies of British regulars on the 19th of April, 1775. On that fateful day, the first British casualties of the War of Independence were shot and killed at the Old North Bridge spanning the Concord River. The redcoats were driven back to Cambridge by scores of Minute Men from surrounding towns who had assembled there, having been rousted by Paul Revere the night before.
Shelby Bonnie and Foxhunting Are Tightly Connected
Piedmont Masters Shelby Bonnie (center), Tad Zimmerman (left), and Gregg Ryan (right ) / Douglas Lees photo
Shelby Bonnie has ridden to hounds most of his life, especially with the Piedmont Fox Hounds (VA), known worldwide for fast runs and plentiful jumping. The pace is swift and the fences are stout.
Bonnie divides his time between his home in San Francisco, California and his Oakley Farm in Upperville, Virginia, home of the Upperville Horse Show grounds and the Piedmont Point-to-Point Races. Bonnie spent quality time during his formative years at Oakley in the company of his grandmother, Theodora A. Randolph, legendary Piedmont Master. Even after Mrs. Randolph stopped riding, she continued to run the farm and the hunt until her passing in 1996 at the age of ninety.
