East Down Foxhounds
John Pickering and the End of an Era
John Pickering, one of Irish foxhunting’s witty raconteurs and colorful characters, passed away recently in his adopted town of Tuam, County Galway, Ireland. In his career he hunted the East Down Foxhounds, the Golden Vale Foxhounds, the Oriel Harriers, and was whipper-in and huntsman to the legendary Master of the Bermingham and North Galway Foxhounds, the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith.
I first met him when he was hunting the Oriel Harriers in the 1980s. At a meet north of Dundalk, in County Louth, hounds put a fox away from Bell’s Covert, but he only ran a couple of hundred yards before going to ground in an earth in the middle of a field. To make matters worse his best hound Heckler was down in the earth with only his stern in view. Pickering sat casually back in the saddle and remarked, “I think I will have to take that hound to a shrink.”
“Why”, I asked, to which Pickering replied, “Because he thinks he’s a bloody terrier!”
The East Down Foxhounds: Wearing the Saint Patrick’s Blue
Huntsman Declan Feeney / Noel Mullins photoSaint Patrick arrived at Strangford Lough in 432 AD from Wales. He quickly converted the local chieftain Dichu, who gave him a barn in which to hold his services. On the site known as the cradle of Irish Christianity on the Hill of Saul (meaning Patrick’s Barn, or in Gaelic, Sabhall Phadraic), there remains today a church and round tower where services are still conducted each Sunday. Saint Patrick died on March 17 in 461 AD, and his remains are interred in nearby Downpatrick Cathedral.
The East Down kennels are in County Down, on the outskirts of the village of Seaforde, southeast of Belfast in Northern Ireland. Hounds were originally kennelled there by the Forde family from 1768 to 1837 and were known as Mr. Forde’s Hounds. They later became known as the Lecale Hounds, and subsequently the East Down Foxhounds. The hunt members wear the St. Patrick’s blue collar.
