Nancy Hannum
Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds: A History
Scarlet on Scarlet: 100 Years of Hunting with Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds 1912-2012, Prue Draper Osborn, 278 pages, Illustrated, color, $100.00 (benefits The Cheshire Hunt Conservancy)
As many of our North American hunts reach their hundredth anniversary milestone, some have produced history books rich with photos and other memorabilia to tell their stories. One of the best is Scarlet on Scarlet: 100 Years of Hunting with Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds 1912-2012 by Prue Draper Osborn. This handsome coffee-table book is not only the history of the legendary hunt, but it’s also the story of the many families who have hunted with the Cheshire Foxhounds, often through three and four generations.
The history of Mr. Stewart’s Cheshire Foxhounds could be divided into three phases: its founding by Plunkett Stewart in 1912; its five-plus decades under the leadership of the late Nancy Penn Smith Hannum; and the latest and perhaps most controversial, the transformation from an all-English pack to a Crossbred pack.
Who Is This?
This portrait along with the question of the subject’s identity was posted on our Facebook page to provide an entertaining and informative way of featuring iconic figures in American foxhunting.
Paula Nelson was first with the correct answer, and if she will contact us with her address she will receive a gift from Foxhunting Life. David Amos provided the right answer just two minutes later. Also Lauren Giannini and Jesse Welsh got it right—all four within the space of an hour.
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.”*
