John Denis
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.
John Denis, MFH
The intersection of people and places is sometimes wondrously coincidental. Irish photojournalist Noel Mullins and I have recently discovered foxhunting friends we have in common from County Galway some forty years since. More than friends, these were larger-than-life individuals enormously influential in the process that turned each of us into the foxhunting men we became.
Fast forward, and here is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of my book, Foxhunting Adventures: Chasing the Story, describing a large painting hanging in the dining room in Bermingham House, County Galway, home of the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, MFH:
"Dominating the end wall above the sideboard and presiding in spirit equal to Molly’s presence, gray-whiskered John Denis surveys all from the saddle. This dramatic nineteenth-century portrait of man, horse, and hound in a graceful swirl of motion and muscle was presented to him by grateful members of the Galway field."
