Michael D.Heath-Caldwell M.Arch.

1954 - 1955 - 1956

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Kingston Maurward Hockey Team

Kingston Maurward - DAJ in middle (2023 - DAJ trying to remember everyone's name)

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Wednesday 23 February 1955
Wanted urgently. Useful Maid for Elderly lady, age 40-50. Resident Cook-house keeper. Country - Apply Mrs.Heath-Caldwell, Cattistock Lodge, Cattistock, Dorset.

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Thursday 15 December 1955
Country Life

History of a West-Country Hunt - by Lionel Dawson
In West Dorset and partly in Somerset there is the Cattistock, a four-days-a-week establishment with a long history.

In the third decade of the 18th century we hear of hounds kept by Mr.Thomas Fownes at Steepleton Iwerne, to the north of the present Cattistock country. Steepleton had been a Pitt property before this gentleman acquired it and he sold it to the famous Peter Beckford's father in 1745. Mr.Fownes was, of course, outside the actual Cattistock country of today but there is little doubt that he hunted in it. The first definite Cattistock Master, however, was the Rev.W.Phelips, of the family which built Montacute House, who came to live at Cattistock Lodge in the village of that name about 1760 and brought his hounds with him. He called his hunt the True Blue - an indication of the pollical views of Dorset squires of that day. On the hunt buttons was the inscription: The Free, the Firm, the Independent Hunt.

In 1806, Mr.J.J.Farquharson began his reign. Then 23 and a pupil of Peter Beckford, he was to hunt a country which is now covered by four packs (including the Cattistock) entirely at his own expense for fifty years, moving his hounds about accordingly. Cattistock was one of his bases. The house in which he lived when there is now occupied by Captain and Mrs.Creswell. It was, perhaps, inevitable that as he grew older some parts of this vast territory was not properly attended to, and a dispute in 1856 with Mr.J.Erle Drax as to the division of the country, and an even more acrimonious argument with Mr.Wingfield Digby, of Sherborne, on the same subject (a most famous case of disputed territory) led to his dignified retirement as the only course "consistent with his principles."

In the reshuffle that followed, the boundaries of the South Dorset, Portman and Blackmore Vale hunts were more or less established, each in a portion of the late Master's domain, but the Cattistock seems to have been left undecided for some time. It was not until 1870 that Lord Poltimore from Devon finally took over and constituted the country as it is today. The pack became a subscription pack in 1872 under the chairmanship of the then Lord Digby, and Mr.J.Codrington took the Mastership; succeeding Masters included Lord Guildford (killed hunting), Mr.R.Chandos-Pole and Mr.John Hargreaves. In 1900 the Rev.E.A.Milne came to the country in which he was tom spend the rest of his life, and he was Master or joint Master, of the Cattistock for thirty years. He had various joint Masters from time to time, including the present Lord Digby (1926-30). For his last season he was joined by Mr.A.H.Higgonson from America, a well-known Master in his own country and an authority on hound breeding.
Mr.Milne was perhaps the last of the parson Masters, actin in his profession in assisting his brethren when required and renowned in the fox-hunting world as a huntsman-master. Mr.Higginson created a fresh era in the country, killed a surprising number of foxes and continued (with his joint-Master, Mr.W.Ruxton, another American, who had joined him in 1934) until 1939. - - -

The moment could not have been more in-opportune as far as he was concerned, for war was on him when he had barely taken up the reins. His joint Master went back to his regiment, hounds had to be reduced and all the tribulations of war-time hunting had to be faced in his first season. The debt which the country owes him is incalculable. The farmers gave him, as always in Dorset, unflagging support, and he hunted hounds himself during the war years. Captain and Mrs.Creswell came to his aid as joint Master in 1941, but the former was also serving in the Navy once more. After the war Mrs.Cresswell became secretary and Colonel Batten was alone until 1948, when Brigadier Hirst joined him, being replace in 1950 by Mr.E.Gundry, a grandson of Mr.Milne. He hunts the dogs two days a week and Tom Tilbrook the bitches on the other two. Jack Bunch turns them on all four days. A third joint Master, Major C.Roberts, who, though comparatively new to the country, quickly endeared himself to all, died suddenly last year. - - -

Nothing spectacular - a moderate day in fact - but representative of the workaday life of a good provincial pack which catches foxes, entertains its followers and keeps the tambourine "a rolling"; whose hounds are still kennelled within sound of that Cattistock Lodge where the Rev.Mr.Phelps listened to the song of his True Blue hounds two hundred years ago.

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Kingston Maurward crowd - JAHC in middle, DAJ front row.