BLENCATHRA FOXHOUNDS: ON RIGHT, GEORGE TICKELL, ESQ., EX-DEPUTY MASTER (1907-1919).
Peel never wore a scarlet coat, his jacket was made of home-spun Cumberland wool, known locally as “hoddengray.”
The late Mr. Jackson Gillbanks, of Whitefield, gave a good pen-picture of John Peel, and I take the liberty of quoting it here. He said—
“John Peel was a good specimen of a plain Cumberland yeoman. On less than £400 per annum he hunted at his own expense, and unassisted, a pack of foxhounds for half a century. John has in his time drawn every covert in the country, and was well known on the Scottish borders. Except on great days he followed the old style of hunting,—that is, turning out before daylight, often at five or six o’clock, and hunted his fox by the drag. He was a man of stalwart form, and well built; he generally wore a coat of home-spun Cumberland wool—a species called ‘hoddengray.’ John was a very good shot, and used a single-barrel, with flint lock, to the last. Though he sometimes indulged too much, he was always up by four or five in the morning, no matter what had taken place the night before; and, perhaps, to this may be attributed his excellent health, as he was never known to have a day’s sickness, until his last and only illness.”
Mr. Gillbanks was also the author of the following verses, published in the Wigton Advertiser:—
“The horn of the hunter is silent,
By the banks of the Ellen no more
Or in Denton is heard its wild echo,
Clear sounding o’er dark Caldew’s roar.