New Huntsman Debuts at the Galway Blazers
Anthony Costello is the new huntsman at the Galway Blazers. / Noel Mullins photo
The Galway Blazers (IR) is a knick name for the County Galway Hunt, the formal name certainly possessing less flair. (Flare?) One account suggests the Blazers acquired their soubriquet when, during a hunt ball in Birr, County Offaly (following a joint meet with the Ormond Foxhounds), the hotel burned down. Alternatively, the term, blazers, might refer to duelling or blazing as the practice was known. Some of the Blazers’ followers had a reputation for duelling!
When I was growing up hunting with the Blazers, Thursdays were the days to bring out young horses and ponies new to hunting. Often we came home on a different pony or horse than we started with as we had our fair share of falls! For that reason, I would not normally have thought of going to a Thursday meet this season, but I am really glad I did.
The Galway Blazers at Cawley’s Bar in Craughwell
John Denis became the first huntsman of the County Galway Hunt (the Blazers) when it was organised in 1839 / Courtesy of Noel Mullins
The Castleboy Hunt Club, established in 1803, hunted the Galway foxes until 1839. At that time a new hunt committee founded the County Galway Hunt, better known today as the Galway Blazers. John Denis, a direct ancestor of the only lady huntsman of the Blazers, Molly O’Rourke, was appointed the first huntsman.
In years past, top Hollywood stars were often seen in Galway visiting the late film director and actor John Huston, a Joint-Master of the Blazers at the time. I have great personal memories of hunting with the Blazers over the years, starting as a child over sixty years ago. In later years I had the pleasure also of serving on the Blazers hunt committee. Few had transport in those early days, so we hacked to meets sometime five and often up to twenty miles from our hometown Loughrea, especially if the meet was Athenry or Turloughmore.
Old English Hounds Thriving at Irish National Hound Show
Pair of Old English hounds. County Louth hound (foreground) shown by huntsman Alan Reilly / Noel Mullins photo
The Irish National Hound Show at Stradbally Hall, County Laois, Ireland keeps growing in both entries and spectators. This year the weather also played a positive role as hound enthusiasts were often three deep along the ringside, and a large number lingered and socialised long after the show was over.
Competition was keen in the foxhound ring where judge Nigel Peel, a well-known hunting correspondent himself (and a member of Foxhunting Life’s Panel of Experts), commented that the Old English hounds were some of the finest he has judged either in Ireland or in the UK, and the Modern English Hounds had real quality as well.
The Old English (or Traditionally-Bred) hounds and the Modern English hounds are judged separately in their own classes, but the winners of those classes come up against each other in the final championship classes for dogs and bi*ches.* On occasion the Old English hounds being bred today will prevail.
Hounds Came First for Cheshire’s Ivan Dowling
Huntsman Ivan Dowling implemented a daring — and successful — hound breeding experiment for Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds. / Jim Graham photo
“I’d spent several minutes trying to describe my job as huntsman to a friend” recalled Ivan Dowling, the forty-two-year-old recently retired huntsman for Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds (PA). “The friend looked at me and said, ‘Ivan, you mean you’re the guy on the place mat?’”
Dowling cringed a bit and smiled, “Yea, that’s me.”
Lady Anne Hemphill (1929–2015)
Lady Anne Hemphill (nee Ruttledge) passed away this week at Craughwell Nursing Home in County Galway. An elegant and friendly lady, with a pleasant greeting for everyone, she will be remembered as one of the most accomplished Field Masters for the Galway Blazers, a role she filled with style for fifteen seasons.
I remember hunting in Oranmore when Michael Dempsey was huntsman, and as he drew the last covert at the Rifle Range in near darkness, hounds found immediately and we were away. Lady Anne leading the field came down in a narrow lane when her horse slipped. Deciding to stop and help we got a glimpse of her hand barely visible over the wall waving us on as she was trying to extricate herself from under her horse, saying,” Go, on, go on, don’t mind me, enjoy yourselves!”
The Galway Blazers at Craughwell
Galway Blazers huntsman Tom Dempsey and whipper-in Anthony Costello hack home after a cracking day’s hunting in Craughwell. / Noel Mullins photo
The County Galway Foxhounds (the Blazers), hunted by Tom Dempsey, had a brilliant day’s hunting at Craughwell, finding five foxes and running each one to ground.
The hunt was formed in the early nineteenth century and hunts about thirty square miles of unique limestone wall country. The first Master and huntsman was John Denis, an ancestor of the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, MFH, who, neé Molly O’Rourke, hunted the Blazers during World War II. There were many other well known Masters, including Isaac (Ikey) Bell, father of the modern English foxhound; American film director John Huston; and Captain Brian Fanshawe, one of England’s illustrious Masters (Warwickshire, North Cotswold, and Cottesmore) and renowned breeder of foxhounds. Two Field Masters that held office for long periods were Lady Anne Hemphill and Willie Leahy.
The Galway Blazers have some of the very best hunting country in the world. To say it is unique is an understatement, with miles of small enclosures, resulting in often fifty stone walls to the mile and uninterrupted views of hounds hunting. To hunt even once with the Galway Blazers is on most hunt followers’ bucket list.
Sure, And the Going Was Soft!
As the owner of a multi-media production studio, Steve Toepp knows what he wants to convey in his foxhunting videos but he finds it to be a challenging task. “Filming while mounted is the most difficult type of videography I have ever encountered,” Toepp says. “I am trying to develop riding techniques that keep […]
Outrageous Fortune
Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle, Anthony Russell, St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2013, 306 pages, Illustrated, $26.99Imagine having two grandmothers who both live in their own castles. Anthony Russell, a writer, musician, and composer in Los Angeles, comes from a family that served England’s kings and queens for five hundred years, which left them very, very wealthy…wealthy enough for his grandmums to purchase castles in England and Ireland.
Russell tells the story of a childhood at the highest levels of British aristocracy in Outrageous Fortune: Growing Up at Leeds Castle. His father, Lord Ampthill, was Prince Philip’s roommate at boarding school. Lord Ampthill also was known as “the Russell baby,” whose paternity and conception were at the heart of a sensational divorce case in the 1920s and a court challenge to his right to the title.
Lord Amptill’s mother (Lady Ampthill, she of the castle in Ireland) swore that he was the son of her husband, despite the fact that their marriage was never fully consummated. (It all had something to do with a bath sponge.)
Lady Ampthill (the author’s grandmother) was a well-recognized figure hunting with the County Galway Foxhounds (the Blazers). She rode side saddle well into her later years, until suffering a fatal accident in the hunting field in 1976.
A Story Lately Told
A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York, Anjelica Huston, Scribner, 2013, 253 pp, ill., $25.00Anjelica Huston seemed to have it all—a famous and talented father whose wealth gave her an idyllic childhood in Ireland and whose many contacts exposed her to some of the world’s most exciting people; a beautiful mother; success as a model; fox hunting with the Galway Blazers. But her memoir, A Story Lately Told: Coming of Age in Ireland, London and New York, reveals the dark detours her life took after her parents separated and her thirty-nine-year-old mother was killed in a car crash.
Huston eventually followed her father, renowned director John Huston (Joint-MFH of the Galway Blazers), and her grandfather, actor Walter Huston, in finding success as an actress and a director. The American actress became the first third generation winner of an Academy Award, for her performance in the 1985 film, Prizzi’s Honor.
But acting was not a path she originally wanted to take, she reveals in this memoir. She adored her father, yet feared him, too, resisting his domineering attempts to push her into becoming an actress. Instead, she opted for a modeling career, knowing it would displease him. And she fell into a relationship at age eighteen with a brilliant but troubled fashion photographer twenty-four years her senior.
George Briscoe: Grand-Master of Hounds
George Briscoe, MH of the Tara Harriers for 71 years, greets Charlie Noell of Ardbraccan House, County Meath, and the Elkridge-Harford Hunt (MD). / Noel Mullins photo
If there were a title of Grand Master of Hounds in our hunting world, George Briscoe would certainly fit the bill. This season George Briscoe hosted his seventy-fifth consecutive opening lawn meet of his beloved Tara Harriers at Craystown, County Meath. The occasion marked his seventy-first season as Joint-Master, making his period as Master and for a time huntsman a world record. Especially when you consider that the majority of the hunt followers were not even born when he succeeded his father in the Mastership in 1942 at age twenty-one.
George is one of nature’s gentlemen, with a broad welcoming smile, a kind word for everybody, and unbounded passions for hunting, the farming community, and the Tara Harriers. He never misses an opportunity to remind followers of the illustrious history of the Tara Harriers. His sitting-room window looks out onto the Hill of Tara, the royal seat of the High Kings of Ireland—probably the most important ancient site in Ireland, the history of which goes back as early as 5,000 BC. George has penned two books on the life of a country gentleman which is a record of life around the big house, hunting, shooting, and fishing, as well as a few racy references just for good measure!
George was a great friend of Betty Bird and her husband Charlie, who was Joint-Master of the Meath Foxhounds from 1956-59 when George was hunt chairman. Later he hunted with the Bird’s home pack, Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds in Pennsylvania, USA. Interestingly one of George’s neighbours, Anne Kelly, left Ireland to work with Betty Bird producing horses for showing and hunting and settled in Pennsylvania. She married racehorse trainer Michael Moran whose mother Betty owned the Aintree Grand National winner, Papillion. Anne is now a Joint-Master of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds.