Brandywine Conservancy
The Future of Foxhunting: We Have Seen the Enemy and He Is Us
Foxhunting is and will continue to be embattled on two fronts: (1) animal rights activism and (2) loss of open space. The good news is that we have strategies for dealing with these pressures. The uncertainty rests with our own will and dedication, as Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo told us many years ago. Now and in the future, we need to look harder within...at us.
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds: An Oasis in Suburbia
If you want to see stunning hunting country, I commend you to FHL’s latest Photo Gallery slide show. We feature Elisabeth Harpham’s lovely photos of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds in Unionville, Pennsylvania.
The Cheshire hunting country is an oasis between the developed suburbs of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and Wilmington, Delaware. This is hunting country for any foxhunter to drool over. But you have to know that country like that just doesn’t happen by a stroke of luck. It’s the product of years of commitment by strong-willed individuals determined to protect what they have.
Nancy Penn Smith Hannum, 1919-2010: A Fixity of Purpose
April 1, 2020
“Hundreds of hurrying people pass within a few miles of Unionville, Pennsylvania, every day—unaware of the magical transformation that waits over a hill and down a road. The village guards the entrance to acres and acres of rolling grassland suspended between the suburbs of Wilmington and Philadelphia like a mirage."
“Immediately noticeable about this unexpected sweep of countryside is the luxury of miles of turf as closely woven and sturdy as homespun. And there is a wondrous absence of wire. No barbed wire, no hog wire, no flagged and electrified monofilament. The post-and-rail fences stretch on and on like railroad tracks. It’s the sort of landscape that strikes organ chords of rapture in a horseman’s soul: gallop-and-jump country, simply an outstanding foxhunting country. It has been painted by renowned artists George Weymouth and Andrew and Jamie Wyeth; filmed by Alfred Hitchcock (the hunt scenes in Marnie); been crash-landed on by Jacky Onassis and those not so famous. And for nearly fifty years, it has been nurtured by Nancy Penn Smith Hannum, the master of Mister Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds.”*
