Regional Correspondents Are Bringing More News
In a recent blog I discussed our intention to expand coverage across the foxhunting world by establishing a network of regional correspondents. We want to publish more news about people and hunts—new Masters, changes in hunt staff, marriages, births, deaths, illnesses—indeed any news that others in our fraternity of foxhunters would want to know.
We want news not only about Masters and staff, but about foxhunters’ accomplishments and milestones as well. Did a foxhunter’s horse win the Kentucky Derby or the Grand National? Was a foxhunter named Horseman of the Year? Win a Pulitzer Prize? Write a best-selling book?
So far, six regional correspondents are in place: Ian Anderson, ex-MFH of the Ashford Valley Hounds (UK); Denya Massey Clarke (ON); Noel Mullins, County Dublin, Ireland; C. Thompson Pardoe, MFH of the Goshen Hunt (MD); Becky Thayer (SC); and Martha Woodham (GA). We’re thrilled to have each of these talented individuals feeding current news from their regions to readers around the foxhunting world through Foxhunting Life.
William Frazer’s Tailor Shop Destroyed by Fire
Michael and Elsie Frazer just four days before fire destroyed their tailor shop Noel Mullins photo
The shop of famous Irish sporting tailor William Frazer in the village of Hospital in County Limerick was destroyed by fire on Wednesday, February 16. William Frazer passed away years ago, but the business was continued by his son Michael and Michael’s wife Elsie.
Besides the complete loss of stock, fabrics, and equipment, all their records were destroyed, including measurements and memorabilia of the many well-known customers like Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and other larger-than-life foxhunters and sporting figures for whom the Frazers built hacking jackets, hunt coats, vests, breeches, and trousers for over two generations.
The Kildare Foxhounds
Whipper-In Ado Moran negotiates the double bank.
The Kildare Foxhounds, kennelled on the grounds of Punchestown National Hunt Racecourse in County Kildare on the east coast of Ireland, met recently at the village of Grangecon in County Wicklow. The countryside and the village were a sea of autumn colours; even the roads were a carpet of multi-coloured leaves.
Hounds met at Moore’s Pub which is run by Paul Moore, the fourth generation of the family. It is still a gem of an old-fashioned pub and was originally an old coaching stop. It is a sensibly laid out pub for hunting and racing fans, as when you are sitting at the short bar having a drink, you can also pick up a copy of The Irish Field, The Farmer’s Journal, and The Racing Post, which are strategically positioned within arms reach.
Horse Tales and Hunt Talk
Where else but in the hunting fields of Ireland could you have found such larger-than-life and totally disparate characters as Lady Molly Cusack-Smith, Elsie Morgan, American John Huston, and Thady Ryan? Sadly, those four have passed on, but others—Michael Dempsey, Willie Leahy, and Aidan O’Connell—wear big shoes as well and are very much with us still! Also included in this delightful book of personality profiles are North America’s Nancy Penn-Smith Hannum and a smattering of French and Australian characters whom you should also meet.
Photo-journalist Noel Mullins is a regular contributor to The Irish Field, and his work has also been published in Horse and Hound, Baily’s, Hunting and Country Illustrated in England, and The Chronicle of the Horse and Foxhunting Life in the U.S.
“I started hunting with the Galway Blazers with Michael Dempsey when I was eight years old in 1952 on the milkman’s pony, Teapot, but only after I helped him on his delivery rounds!” recalls Mullins.
The Kildare Foxhounds
The Kildare Foxhounds, kennelled on the grounds of Punchestown National Hunt Racecourse in County Kildare on the east coast of Ireland, met recently at the village of Grangecon in County Wicklow. The countryside and the village were a sea of autumn colours; even the roads were a carpet of multi-coloured leaves.
Hounds met at Moore’s Pub which is run by Paul Moore, the fourth generation of the family. It is still a gem of an old-fashioned pub and was originally an old coaching stop. It is a sensibly laid out pub for hunting and racing fans, as when you are sitting at the short bar having a drink, you can also pick up a copy of The Irish Field, The Farmer’s Journal and The Racing Post which are strategically positioned within arms reach.
The County Louth Foxhounds at Dunany Estate
Following the County Louth Foxhounds famous black, tan, and white Old English pack is a double pleasure when combined with one of its most popular autumn hunting meets, the Dunany Estate on the northeast coast of Ireland.
Despite the inconvenience of some of the issues presented by reaching the grand age of ninety-two, Joy Bellingham together with her daughter Caroline were out to view hounds draw the woods around their extensive estate. Both were enthusiastic followers of the Louth, Meath, and Kildare foxhounds when they hunted.
Harry Worcester-Smith and the Westmeath Foxhounds
The Westmeath Foxhounds based in the midlands of Ireland was founded in 1854 and is one of the most popular
foxhunting packs in Ireland. They have had a distinguished succession of Joint-Masters over the years, but one of the most flamboyant arrived at the Irish kennels from the USA in 1912 with a retinue that caused quite a stir in the neighbourhood.
The new Master’s entourage included sixteen Thoroughbred horses, a pack of American hounds, five African-American grooms, a yellow open-top sports car, a yellow sulky, and three fighting cocks. His name was Harry Worcester-Smith, MFH of the Grafton Hounds in Massachusetts. He was even better known for the 1905 Great Foxhound Match in the Piedmont Valley with Mr. Alexander Henry Higginson’s English hounds, mainly of Fernie origin.
Remembering Lady Molly
Continuing my theme on the intersection of people and places, FHL subscribers might remember the story that Noel Mullins sent us last month about the Galway Blazers’ Puppy Show. The story was accompanied by a Mullins photograph of the Blazers’ long-serving MFH and huntsman Michael Dempsey. I was thrilled to see the photo, for I have my own memories of Michael Dempsey.
Before Dempsey became Master of the Blazers, he whipped-in to the late Lady Molly Cusack-Smith and the Bermingham and North Galway hounds. In that capacity both he and she are principal characters in one of the stories—a true ghost story that happened forty years ago—in my book, Foxhunting Adventures. So Mullins and I exchanged memories of our mutual connections.
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.”
Staghunting Banned in Ireland
Wednesday, June 28, 2010 marked a sad day for hunting in Ireland when a coalition government lead by the majority party Fianna Fail, the minority Green Party, and some Independent members of Parliament voted to end a 180-year-old tradition by banning the only pack of staghounds on the island, the Ward Union Staghounds. It is all the more remarkable, considering the extremely serious economic problems that Ireland has at the moment, that the Green Party chose to make staghunting a central issue in their renegotiated program for government.