Dartmoor Visible

Abstract

The county of Devon in southwestern England is the home of provincial hunting par excellence. Still largely agricultural, Devon lies between two coasts and two great moors, the National Parks of Exmoor and Dartmoor. Since 1995, the National Parks of Britain have been attempting ‘conservation and enhancement’ of cultural as well as natural ‘heritage’ within their boundaries.¹ Equivocating about what may or may not constitute ‘a genuine Dartmoor tradition’, the Dartmoor National Park Authority have recently hazarded the example of ‘common land management with its ancient origins, pony drifts, hunting and field sports’.²

Devonshire is certainly the worst hunting country I ever was in; yet, strange to say, there are more hounds kept in it than in any other three counties in England. Independent of the established packs of stag and fox-hounds (of which there are one of the former, and four of the latter), nearly half of the resident gentlemen, and the greater part of the yeomanry, keep what they call ‘a cry of dogs;’ and a friend of mine, who resides among them, told me he had hunted with seventy-two packs!

Charles James Apperley, Nimrod’s Hunting Tours (1835)