PART II: LORD COVENTRY AND THE FORMATION OF THE NORTH COTSWOLD

In 1858 Lord Fitzhardinge, taking the view that the country was too big for any one pack of hounds, decided to give up a great portion of the vale lying to the west of the Cheltenham-Tewkesbury road. Local hunting enthusiasts therefore decided to form their own pack, under the Mastership of Mr Cregoe Colmore of Cheltenham . Mr Colmore hunted the whole of the Cotswold country thus delineated for the next ten seasons.

It was not until 1868, however, that the North Cotswold appeared as a separate country, after Mr Colmore discontinued his visits to the Broadway country, claming it was too far from the Cheltenham kennels. This lead to an acrimonious wrangle, known in the press as the ‘Cotswold Controversy’. The affair had a happy ending, however: the northern part of the country was taken by Lord Coventry, who, a s Master of the Worcestershire Hunt for some years previously, had complained that the south part of the country was rarely, if ever hunted. As this apparently fell on deaf ears, he resigned, and undertook to hunt the Cotswold’s former Broadway Country at his own expense, purchasing a pack of hounds and building the Kennels in Broadway which are used by the Hunt to this day. It was thus under his auspices that the North Cotswold came into existence, a fact commemorated by his coronet which appears on the Hunt button.

LORD COVENTRY

No hunt could have had a more auspicious start, for in George William, 9 th Earl of Coventry, we find a figure in the hunting world almost as notable as Lord Fitzhardinge himself. He was both a renowned sportsman and one of the greatest Hound-breeders of his time. Besides his activities in the interests of Foxhunting, Lord Coventry played a prominent part on the Turf, both over the sticks and on the flat. In his early days he had the distinction of winning the Grand National in two consecutive years (1863 and 1864), both his winners unusually being mares. These were Emblem and Emblematic, both small, and both having started on the Flat, where they were said not to be able to stay! Lord Coventry died in 1930, at the age of 91, and some readers may remember the 1923 victory of his horse Verdict in the Cambridgeshire, where he beat the French crack, Epinard. This was one of the final successes in a long and illustrious sporting career.

Lord Coventry’s home was some 18 miles distant from Broadway, at Croome Court in South Worcestershire, but he travelled by pony and trap to the kennels, hacked to the meets and took the same conveyance home each hunting day. To remind him of his hunting country, he also erected a "Folly" on the top of Fish Hill above Broadway village, the famous landmark known as Broadway Tower . It is said that he could view Broadway Tower from his drawing room at Croome Court .