ledbury foxhounds
The Ledbury Foxhounds at Manor Farm
Here’s eventer Alice Pearson’s helmet-cam video of her return to the hunting field for the first time since her hard tumble several weeks earlier. Her video captures the Manor Farm meet on the day that journalist Leslie Wylie joined the Lady Martha Sitwell for their day with the Ledbury Foxhounds. See Wylie’s story below, “Part III: I Got Ledburied (and Liked It).”
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Meeting Martha, Part III: I Got Ledburied (and Liked It)
Intrigued by a photo of a British foxhunter with smoldering eyes and apparent ice in her veins, and sensing a story, Leslie Wylie reached out to its subject, the Lady Martha Sitwell, in the hope she could arrange for an interview. The next thing she knew she had accepted Martha’s surprise invitation to come hunting with her in England (see “Part I: How I Got Invited to Foxhunt with British Royalty” and “Part II: Darling, You’re Mad!“). What follows is Part III of Wylie’s epic weekend.
See the girl on the chestnut toward the left who is pointing her horse straight at a 10-foot tall stand of sticks? That's me. / Viki Ross photo (http:/www.vikirossphotography.co.uk)
Breakfast of Champions
“So, let me get this straight: This is your first time foxhunting in the UK and you’re going out with the Ledbury?”
Around the fourth or fifth time someone asks me this, accompanied by a snort of laughter, I begin to feel a pinch of concern. I grew up hunting and have jumped plenty of proper-sized fences in my life but… it’s been a while. The Ledbury is widely regarded as one of the formidable hunts in the world. Was I in over my head?
On the morning of the hunt Martha comes floating down the spiral staircase into Manor Farm’s kitchen looking like she’s just stepped out of an antique foxhunt painting. Smartly outfitted in a canary vest and those vintage balloon-thigh breeches that no woman has been able to pull off since Jackie O, she exclaims “Good morning, darling!” then leans in conspiratorially.
Meeting Martha, Part II: ‘Darling, You’re Mad!’
Intrigued by a photo of a British foxhunter with smoldering eyes and apparent ice in her veins, and sensing a story, Leslie Wylie reached out to its subject, the Lady Martha Sitwell, in hopes that she could arrange for an interview. The next thing she knew she had accepted Martha’s surprise invitation to come hunting with her in England (see Part I, “How I Got Invited to Foxhunt with British Royalty”). What follows is Part II of Wylie’s epic weekend.
Photo by Viki Ross (www.vikirossphotography.co.uk)
A Grand Entrance
When the American guest-of-honor arrives to a dinner party over an hour late accompanied by a complete stranger from whom she has hitchhiked a ride, most people of a certain social stature wouldn’t be amused—and understandably so. But the Lady Martha Sitwell does not fall into the category of “most people.”
To rewind: The hosts of the next day's meeting of the Ledbury Foxhounds (UK), the Leekes, had generously invited Martha and me to stay the night at their Manor Farm in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, so we’d be on-site for hunting the next morning. I was coming in from London and, because I am logistically challenged, I caught the wrong train and dug the hole even deeper by getting off at the wrong station.
British Hunts: Damned If They Do and Damned If They Don’t
British hunts are damned and accused by hunt protesters whether the evidence is valid or not. A dead fox was found in a hedge in the vicinity where the Ledbury foxhounds were hunting. A member of the hunt staff, who had a chance to handle the carcass before it was hustled off by hunt protesters, claims it was cold and had a gunshot wound. Hours later, photos of the dead fox were posted on various social media strongly accusing the hunt for unlawfully killing it. The local hunt saboteurs association reported on the Ledbury Reporter’s website that the fox’s body had been taken away for a “post mortem.” Hunt spokesman Donald Haden said the hunt conducts its activities within the law. “We are now into the lambing season,” said Haden, “and farmers quite understandably are not hesitant in shooting any foxes they see disturbing their sheep. We believe that in this particular case the fox had indeed been shot by a local farmer several hours or possibly days before and the dead carcass then thrown into the hedge.” Click for Gary Bills-Geddes’s story in the Ledbury Reporter. Posted February 26, 2016
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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?
Foxhunting Is Part of the Curriculum at the Elms School
The Elms students at the kennels of the Ledbury Foxhounds (UK)
Mrs. Austen, a teacher at The Elms School, Malvern, UK, wrote to the Countryside Alliance to report on last season’s student hunting activities.
“We had a total of fifty-two different children aged from six to thirteen out hunting last season,” Mrs. Austen wrote. “We hunted on sixteen days with the Ledbury in groups, and had three visiting days—the Heythrop, the Croome and West Warwickshire, and the South Herefordshire. We had the whole gang out at our own Ledbury meet at the school.
