Blencathra
By Midge Todhunter (Editor of The Master’s Voice)
Blencathra from St. John in the Vale
The Hunting Act 04 banned foxhunting on 18 February 2005. Next morning hundreds gathered in Threlkeld village at the foot of Blencathra Mountain in the heart of the Cumbrian fells, and I was proud to be one of them.
We strode through the village behind huntsman Barry Todhunter and his Blencathra Foxhounds to join others already amassed at The Riddings, former home of the late Blencathra hunt master Squire Crozier where this pack had been kennelled for 102 years. And there we made a stance.
We were not there defeated. Somehow, through and beyond this nonsense, common sense would surely prevail. The ban did not understand the practicalities of hunting. We knew it would not save the life of one fell fox. We knew from that day all foxes would come under amateur sniper-fire from those who simply want to kill. It is inevitable that one day soon a stray bullet will strike an innocent victim, a child perhaps walking the fells, and then who will take the blame?
The ban said to us - the tail was now wagging the dog. A minority group of the ill-informed had trounced the knowledge of the nation’s rural people. And it was not all down to urbanites. Country people - and people who now live in the country: two separate groups with cultures founded on entirely different societies and beliefs. The former have for generations lived and worked the land according to its intrinsic values: most of the latter consider ‘the view’ they have just bought also comes with jurisdiction over that land and want it ruled by the ‘fluffy fox’ syndrome.
As fellow Cumbrian Lord Melvyn Bragg wrote in his excellent article for The Masters Voice: “I do not doubt the sincerity of those who are against hunting. I do however suggest that they think that foxes are more Disney than Destructive.” (See: TMV | July 2009)
Fox numbers have still had to be managed since the ban. Foxes go on merciless killing sprees: they are vermin; they carry more diseases than the brown rat. So now they shoot foxes. Or try to. And poison them, and gas them, and snare them: it’s a lawless free for all. But it’s not in your face, so why should you care?
As a countryside journalist, I have been out with fox shooters since the ban. I have seen a half-grown fox cub take one step out of its earth, and be picked off by a rifle bullet. It disappeared backwards from whence it came. Was it killed? Was it wounded? Was it still alive? Who knows? Hounds kill a fox - or they don’t. It is that simple.
In another case, I saw a fox blasted at close quarters with a shot gun. The first barrel blew one of its back legs off. It took a while for the shooters to kill the fox outright.
Hunting with hounds had carried out a selective cull. Many stout foxes were never caught, and it was down to organised foxhunting that rural Britain had a healthy rural population of foxes. But how long will that be when the last foxhound kennels are empty?
As we stood at The Riddings that day the word Blencathra rekindled more personal thoughts for me, for on the fellside behind us stood the Blencathra Outdoor Centre. It was built in1898, and for 40 years was the Blencathra Sanatorium for Tuberculosis sufferers. And so the word Blencathra became a word of solace to some.
It was also where some of Cumberland’s war sons were brought home to die - victims of the cruel poison gases in the trenches of the First World War. And one of those was a soldier of the Black Watch Regiment by the name of Johnny Todhunter: he was my grandfather.
With Johnny away at war, his family were penniless, and when the end came there was no money for his funeral. So the Establishment had Johnny buried in a paupers grave in Carlisle Cemetery. A small stone with a number roughly chiselled on it, marks the spot to this day. A callous ending to the life of a brave son of England. But doubtless the same story can be found in most every cemetery across the land.
So to me the ‘hunting ban’ that February day spelt treachery to the memory of my grandfather - and the millions upon millions of his comrades who died fighting for our freedom in both World Wars. The ban took away our freedom of choice - the freedom Johnny’s generation had fought and died for. They really had no option but to join the war and fight, but if they had not, the consequences for our generation would have been dire. We would have lived the last century under poverty, tyranny and murderous oppression. And we would have been selectively culled.
I have (taped) interviews with a Ukraine woman Martha, who, as a girl, had lived under the Stalin dictatorship regime. It is horrific stuff. With no free press, Stalin did not inform the rural people they were at war until one day Stalin’s henchmen drove into their village to announce the advancing Germans troops were only a day away.
A week later as a POW, Martha was sent to hard labour on a farm in Austria - where the dogs lived in the warmth of the farmhouse kitchen, and she lived with the vermin and stench in the farmyard stable. Her captives told her: “Don’t worry, you only have to die once...”
Blencathra Mountain aka Saddleback
Generations of Todhunters have lived and worked around and about Blencthra Mountian: farmers, miners, tradesmen; living in the tiny hamlets of Mungrisdale, Mosedale, Fellside, and in remote farmhouses around the ‘Back of Skiddaw’. Listed among the former huntsmen of the Blencathra is 'Laal' Isaac Todhunter - no doubt a blood relative.
By the beginning of 20th Century many had sought better pay and conditions in nearby townships. Johnny Todhunter had set up a family home in Carlisle and joined the Great Western Railway, and so began a chapter of great railwaymen on my father’s side of the family. But soon his Country called him, and he joined his comrades in arms in the so-called Great Expeditionary Force of the Great War: the war, they said, that would end all wars.
The perception laid on them was a swift and glorious victory, and a hero’s return: the reality was indescribable.
Battalions of men trapped in stinking rat runs in a foreign land, their feet rotting in the squelching filth; bullets whistling, shells raining down day and night. Unimaginable battle fatigue and sleep deprivation. And then came the poison gasses: the effects were brutal, causing slow and painful death. The dreaded gasses became one of the most terrifying horrors recorded of any war. The outset of World War II saw every man, woman and child carrying a gas mask as routine - just in case.
Gassed by John Singer Saregent
Of course Johnny’s is not a solitary case, but it is a typical one. On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history suffering 57,470 casualties and 19,240 dead. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Nation almost half a million men.
The madness of war is never far from us. There hangs in the Portrait Gallery in London a huge painting of the British war lords of World War I. In many ways it is a great work of art, and a telling group portrait of a time in our country’s history. But I despise its content.
It depicts 20 or so men in high military battledress, each standing in a singularly autocratic manner. They do not speak, and yet we hear their voices; they do not move, yet we see how they walk. With their stiff upper lips, it was these men who sent thousands upon thousands of our nation's sons to be shot to bits on a foreign soil, seemingly based on cannon-fodder strategies.
Part of the inscription below the painting quotes the troops' song as they marched to the Front Line:
Onward Christian Soldiers
Onward without fear
With our great commanders
Safely in the rear
The war poets of the time included Rudyard Kipling, who penned: “If they question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.”
In my early days I had roamed the world, but have now returned to live where I can see Blencathra every day. It is now the only place where I feel I belong: this is where my roots are. I am among true rural folk who instinctively know how things should be here.
Foxhunting on this small island was the flux that brought rural folk together; not to kill foxes, but to interact. The effects were life long friendships, and neighbours who cared. Its tones were of merriment, goodwill and rural harmony. The ban has left a bitter taste in the mouths of many, which refuses to go away.
In the months ahead we will have an opportunity to turn things about. But we cannot simply turn back the clock to how things were before the ban. There are those who will never accept hunting. But the majority of the public want to be convinced hunting has, since February 2005, got its act together; made strident changes, brought in stringent rules and regulations, and founded an independent and accountable body to enforce these new rules.
All this has been done: it’s called the Hunting Regulation Authority (HRA). We must all listen to, learn and adopt this new legislation, or we will fluff our lines and get more of the same. We have to let the world see - surely better an activity strictly governed, than that activity be driven underground? One certainty we have all learnt since the ban is there will always be some form of hunting in this land, no matter what Government is in power.
There is a sea-change afoot. The mood in our countryside now is we can repeal the Hunting Act ’04, and we must unite together as one to do so. TMV exists to support and promote hunting, not to create policy. We pledge our support behind the Council of Hunting Associations, Vote-OK, Countryside Alliance, Masters of Foxhounds Association, Association of Masters of Harriers and Beagles and other recognised leaders.
We are not rich kids. My peer group are countrymen, and have been hunting for 45 years and more. We care deeply about this land. Each of us has looked to our conscience: re-appraise with honesty the hunting argument in our minds many times. Yet we continue to arrive at the same conclusion.
...rural Britain WILL speak again...
The hunting ban has been a step too far…and we will rise again to the challenges that lay ahead. We do not lie down - us Englishmen, nor do the Scottish, and nor do the Welshmen. We shall again unite and march again to freedom, but we must achieve our aims by calm fortitude and democracy: the ballot box. For there is no other way.
All images copyright of Midge Todhunter
The Northern Fells
Longing for the Northern Fells
I may walk in Southern ways
By the lovely river land
And watch the soft wind as it plays
With the corn on either hand
By honeysuckle, and wild rose lane
And flowery, fairy dells
But my heart goes out with a kind of pain
For a sight of the Northern Fells
I may live where the Western sky
Lifts over the open moor
And watch the great ships steaming by
Through the stately harbour door
But soft is the air of moor and sea
Breathing of slumber spells,
And wild, wild, wild is the heart of me
For the cold of the Northern Fells.
Oh to stand where the great hills close
Round the tarn at evening fall
While the brown, brown bracken grows to a rose
And the wildfowl wheel and call
And through the gloom and the glamouring
You can hear the light sheep bells,
Ah, never the South and the West for me
With my heart on the Northern Fells.
Anon.