HARRIERS

In the last quarter of the last century Mr. Westbrooke of Cranford is stated by Mr. Grantley Berkeley to have kept by subscription a pack of harriers. His elder brother, the Hon. Moreton Berkeley, afterwards sixth Earl of Berkeley, acted as whipper-in, and on Mr. Westbrooke's resignation, the two brothers appear to have kept up this pack for a time. The country hunted comprised Hownslow Heath, Harlington Common, Hampton Common, and occasionally West End in the Harrow country. (fn. 27)

There is an allusion to a pack of harriers in a History of Hampton by Ripley, published in 1868, which had then ceased to exist, but no details are given as to the date either of its formation or dissolution.

Middlesex was formerly frequently, and is still occasionally, hunted by hunts belonging to the adjacent counties, such as the Hertfordshire, the Old Berkeley East, and the Royal Buckhounds.

Among the places indicated on a chart of the meets of the last-named hunt, contained in Lord Ribblesdale's The Queen's Hounds, are Uxbridge, Southall, Hayes, Cranford, and Bedfont, and he quotes a graphic description of a run given by Lord Colville in 1868, in which his late Majesty King Edward, then Prince of Wales, took part. On this occasion the stag ran from Denham Court, past Pinner, and straight over Harrow Hill into what are known as the Duck Paddle Fields, and thence to Wormwood Scrubbs. It was eventually taken at Paddington Goods Station and the hunt accompanied the Prince of Wales to Marlborough House, riding through Hyde Park and Constitution Hill in hunting dress. (fn. 28)

Footnotes