CD3

(72 mins)
 

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FIRST HUNT / THE YANDLES AND HUNTING / RECAP OF FAMILY HISTORY

[BJ reminds TY of his early fear of riding] The first recorded day that he first went hunting, TY was about 10 in 1945, but he was taken to the meet at the Carnarvon Arms, on a donkey, when he was three. He was told but he doesn't remember that.

Then he went away to this prep school which was just up the road, a day school. Then he went to Cheltenham junior school, which was a prep school for Cheltenham College. He must have gone there when he was 9 and he was head boy. Then he went to Cheltenham College. He left when he was 16. He had then become strong enough to stop the pony that was around at the time. He's never particularly enjoyed riding, but he enjoyed hunting and riding was a good way of following the hunt.

His family had the local pack of Staghounds. As a little boy he can remember his father dressed in a red coat, with the requisite dirty breeches, having been hunting all day, sitting a the tea table talking about what had happened during the day. It didn't mean much but was part of his life. They were the Tiverton Staghounds.

When TY's grandfather came to Hele Bridge in 1847, then there was no stag hunting on Exmoor. The deer on the moor were hunted by private packs up to about 1820. They all went off and he imagines that was when fox hunting started. Because of the enclosure and more intensive farming, deer weren't so popular on farms in the rest of England so the numbers went down. On Exmoor there was still a nucleus of the old herd. In 1855 when TY's grandfather would have been 15, Charles Palk Collyns and some friends including Lord Fortescue, got together and started the Devon and Somerset Staghounds, which were a subscription pack.

He suspects they were quite unique. He doesn't know the history of other forms of hunting, other private packs of hounds kept by Lord this and that, but to have a pack of hounds kept by the community, local people who wanted to hunt, he's pretty sure, was quite unusual.

He's sure that BJ has been told that there were supposed to be 70 or 80 deer on Exmoor at the time when they started. By 1880 there were deer everywhere, because the farmers had stopped shooting them, and the poachers had been dissuaded from shooting them, because people liked watching the hunt.

So his grandfather at age of 15 would have been around when that pack of hounds was started and Mr Bissett was the first master and he would have lived at Pixton which he rented. The hounds were kennelled at Jury which is the house at the bottom of Pixton Drive. He supposes he rented the whole of Pixton but not the farms. The hounds being kennelled at Jury were only 2 fields away from Hele Bridge where he was brought up. So grandfather Tom Yandle would have been part of the scene as a local farmers son. He suspects that his grandfather was one of the farmers that the gentry of the local hunt used to consult (like BJ knows about the Hayes and the Bawdens and the Clatworthys, the Westcotts, on the moor now).

So that left Tom Yandle taking over the farm when he was 30 in 1870, marrying a Miss Lock, they were farmers down at Tiverton, at Godwell farm. Some of his elder brothers went off, they went to Australia, New Zealand and Canada. That is what happened in farming families. He wasn't the eldest but he was the one who was left in charge at home. He doesn't know how that worked. He married Miss Lock, his father died or retired, no one knows much about him except he spent too much time in the pubs in Dulverton. [TY thinks that is perhaps where he gets it from].

His grandfather had 8 children, Tom, Jack, Perce, Bert, Ern, Amy, Kate and Clare. The hunt progressed and the 4 boys were allowed to go hunting. TY's father was born 1880 he was getting towards one of the younger ones. They were born from 1874 onwards, interspersed girls and boys. The eldest one died of consumption which was common in those days. [Back to top]
 

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HUNTING THE TIVERTON AREA / SIR JOHN AMORY'S HOUNDS / TIVERTON STAGHOUNDS / CHARLIE SLATER / HUNTING IN WARTIME / THE YANDLE BROTHERS

When Tom Yandle, TY's father, was still at Hele Bridge in the 90s, the Devon and Somerset Staghounds were responsible, as indeed they still are, for the deer in the counties of Devon and Somerset, which then included the Quantocks and what we called the Tiverton country. That part of Devon, a little bit of Somerset, the west or south side of the Taunton Barnstaple railway line and all the A361, although there is still some argument about it, but as they're parallel. So you have quite a lot of country between Brushford and Holcombe Rogus, Chevithorne and Uploman, down to Tiverton, indeed behind Tiverton, then from the river Exe to the river Taw, indeed the Torridge which is a long way down. In that area there was some red deer and they obviously increased. The Devon and Somerset used to go to the Chain Bridge, Stoodleigh, Duvale Farm area, quite close to Bampton, and spend a week, and hunt down there.

TY realises he has the dates wrong. The Yandles left Hele Bridge Farm in 1880. Tom Yandle and his sons still hunted with the Devon and Somerset up Dulverton way, from Duvale Farm, which is the farm just past the Black Cat. He rented that farm which he thinks is also a barton, so he was part of the hunting life up on Exmoor. Distance wasn't an object, they just got on their horses an hour earlier and rode off. Also because of the Tiverton country just described, he put up the huntsmen and the hunt staff, the grooms, whoever they were. They would take the hounds from Exford, where they were then kennelled, having been at Jury [?House] for some years they were moved to Exford. Or perhaps they hadn't then moved, he's not sure of the date of that. Anyway, the hounds were taken from Exford to Duvale Farm where they were hunted for three or four days.

There was someone called E V A Stanley who was one of the then masters, who said to TY's grandfather, that he couldn't keep on coming down there because they had more deer than they could cope with on Exmoor and they were hiving off the Quantocks to another hunt and couldn't they find someone down there with a few hounds who would hunt those deer. So TY's grandfather said the only people he could think of was the Amory family. TY's not sure that a tenant farmer would have asked the then Sir John Amory if he would like to set up a pack of staghounds, but it was done. They were called Sir John Amory's hounds, Sir J H Amory's Staghounds, or something. They were effectively ran by his sons, Ian and ?Ludovic, he thinks. They said they would run them until the master of the Tiverton Foxhounds gave up, who was a chap called Unwin, who was their cousin. 

So in 1898 the Tiverton Staghounds, as they are known now, were formed. Then they were called Sir John Amory's Hounds. So TY's father and grandfather were part of that life because they lived down there as well as part of the Exmoor hunting life. Grandpa Yandle apparently used to teach the harbourer how to harbour. He was a game keeper from Rackenford, called Miller. That is how the Tiverton Staghounds were born. Two or three years ago they had a centenary dinner, so TY went and spoke about what little he knew of the beginnings.

Then the Yandles took TY's farm, Riphay in 1901, so naturally they gravitated back to Exmoor, although one of the brothers was still down at Duvale. He retired there and sold it in the 60s. They hunted with the Tiverton Staghounds when they were this way. It was closer to do so. The masters were the Amory boys, Ian who eventually became Sir Ian, and they gave up in 1910. Captain Harry Amory, a brother took on the Tiverton Staghounds and kennelled them at Hele Manor. He had told TY's grandfather that he wanted to build a house in the Exe valley, so he was already up there. He took on the hounds from his brothers. TY thinks the father had died.

So they were Captain Amory's Hounds and in 1910. In 1914 Captain Harry was called up again, he had been adjutant to the Duke of Portland, and he had retired but because of the war he had to go back. So he gave up the hounds, having had them for 4 years, and went off. They put down some but kept a nucleus pack. They were looked after by a fairly elderly man called Charlie Slater, who lived at Hatch Farm near North Molton. He was Lord Poltimore's gamekeeper.

Charlie Slater kept these hounds going through the war and hunted the Tiverton country, when he could, with one fat pony and just a few hounds. One of the Yandle brothers, the deafest one, who didn't hear what the others were saying, volunteered to go and fight. The other three stayed and farmed their farms. Grandfather Yandle was getting old. TY's father as has been told, was being a draper, but came back and farmed TY's farm. He probably came back before the war. The hounds were at Hele Manor from 1910-1914. Then they went to Hatch Farm with Charlie Slater. There are countless stories of how he hunted in a rather unusual way during the war, of him letting the hounds go, having sent postcards to people saying go to point A or B and if the hounds come to you go on with them. It was like mobile phones today but by post 2 or 3 days before. [Back to top]
 

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CHARLIE SLATER / YANDLE BROTHERS TAKING OVER TIVERTON STAGHOUNDS, 1919-1945 / RUNNING STAGHOUNDS / FATHER DRAPING / FATHER RETURNS, DESIGNATED FIELD MASTER / TIVERTON HUNTING D&S COUNTRY / TIVERTON STAGHOUNDS NOW / TIVERTON COUNTRY

Charlie Slater kept the hounds going to 1918. Then he said that he couldn't do it properly and he was too old. So the 4 brothers, Jack, Bert, Perce and Ern, got together and decided they would do it. Their father Tom Yandle was not pleased and said they couldn't because they were tenant farmers and the landlord would put the rent up. He said that they wouldn't have enough money to do it. It was the gentry who should do it. None of them were married. TY's father being 38, so some of them were 42 or 43 and they weren't encumbered with any thing. They had a farm. They didn't own the farm but at the end of that war prices had gone up and they were feeling fairly prosperous. So they decided to do it.

The kennels were then built at Duvale, the farm down the valley, where TY's uncle Percy lived, who was to be always a bachelor. He lived with his sister. The other brothers married in the next 15 years, the 3 of them, including his father. In fact he married last. They were already at different farms. So the Tiverton Staghounds were under the Yandle family. They took them on in1919 and gave them up in1945. So that was a long tenure by anybody's standards, of 26 years.

They managed it by having 4 or 5 workmen at Duvale or more. There were certainly 7 on Riphay. It wasn't too difficult to do what ever they had to do, TY keeps away himself, cleaning them and exercising them. They would have had carters, 2 or 3 people looking after the cart horses. That was how they farmed. Those chaps could have looked after a couple of hunters, or perhaps they did it themselves.

They had a horse and cart that collected the fallen stock. An old boy used to do it. He would take a shotgun in his car. If you had a cow with a broken leg or something you would have it shot and put in the cart to feed the hounds. They did it quite successfully and he thinks the budget was about £500 a year. The date of that he doesn't know. When they got going a few people subscribed. They had a series of village hops at Witheridge and Tiverton and Huntsham to make a bit of money. It was fairly low key, they weren't very interested really. They could do it how they liked if they didn't take too much money from everybody else. They couldn't complain.

TY thinks they were successful. He doesn't remember. He was too young. Because they knew each other very well They could predict what the others were going to do. 2 of the brothers shared the hunting of the hounds. One would do it one day and one would do it another. The other one would be whip. If for instance they were in the Exe valley one would be up on Room Hill and he could shout to the other one on the other side and know exactly what they were saying. Apparently it was always in quite strong dialect as hunting terms often are. They would know what to expect to hear if someone was shouting. They had a successful time.

When TY's father was draping, he got sacked because he was using the lift which had been installed in this huge great emporium in Bristol of Baker & Baker. The old man Mr Baker wanted the lift and there was someone in it. It turned out to be TY's father and he was called up on the carpet and told that he knew very well that staff weren't supposed to use the lift, therefore he could go.

That must have been around 1910. His father came back to the farm which was being farmed by his father, the brothers being off elsewhere. Although he got a job in London as a shop walker, he took on the farm. When they started the hunt in 1919, he was designated Field Master rather than any other job.

So he was in charge of the field and they met at the Carnarvon in1920. The Baker family were staying at the Carnarvon and they came out hunting. TY's father went up to Mr Baker and said that he didn't think Mr Baker knew him. Mr Baker said that he didn't. TY's father said that he had sacked him then but now he could tell him to go home if he wanted to! The Baker boys, there was Duggie Baker at Winsford, who died some years ago and Joyce Baker who just died, he remembered it well. He was just a little boy. They were very pleased that someone had talked to their father like that because he was a bit of an old autocrat.

[BJ asks if the Tiverton country came up as far as the Carnarvon]. TY says that no it didn't but it was a good question. They were always seen to hunt a day a fortnight or three weeks in the Devon and Somerset country because they were getting going and there weren't that many deer by then. They kept going through the next war and gave up in 1945. The Tiverton Staghounds are still going. It's the farmers pack. There are farmers who are chairmen and farmers who are masters, farmers who are secretaries and so on.

Tiverton Staghound country is very different to Exmoor. It's more enclosed. They seem to be very successful. They have a lot of following. They are run more or less the same way, they have a committee and a chairman. The Devon and Somerset has always been run in that the master is paid to hunt the country for one season, and given a set sum of money for that, as opposed to some packs where the masters are appointed to run it but are not expected to fund it if it needs more funding than is available. As chairman TY tells them what money they can have. They agree a sum of money.

In 1945 they were 65 or 70 and too old to carry on. Other people took on the pack. The brothers gave up hunting. TY's father's sight went. He had glaucoma. TY was 10 then so he grew up hunting more with the Devon and Somerset because he could trot up to Winsford or Dulverton or Marsh Bridge or somewhere and go hunting, so the Tiverton Staghounds were not part of his life. He just knew they were there and he was great friends. [Back to top]
 

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STAGHOUND MASTERS / AUNT NORAH / APPEAL OF STAGHUNTING OVER FOXHUNTING / RIDING TO HOUNDS / KEEPING A HORSE / AUNT NORAH

TY's aunt, his mother's sister, who having married Dennis Cox, who was a sort of horse coper who lived in Exford, who was the son of the Lynton parson, there were 3 or 4 sons, with just a little money but not enough, and who kept the riding stables at Exford. It was his second marriage and he was much older than her. She became master about the time that TY left school. He was then almost immediately closely involved simply because his aunt was the master. Miss Abbott had been master during the war and Mrs Tommy Hancock so it wasn't unusual for a woman to be master. She then took Norah Cox as she then was, her husband joined her, they might have taken it on together. He was supposed to be joint master but he didn't really ride much.

Then after 2 or 3 years he shot himself because of financial problems and the fact that he had fought in the first World War and had a silver plate in his head, that was what they said. He left her with a son and she went on for a year or two as a widow and master then remarried and gave up. Someone called Colonel Murphy came and took the hounds on. He went on for a bit. TY was just involved as a young man who went hunting, he wasn't there in any official capacity.

On Exmoor a lot of people follow the hunt on any old machine or motor-bike or push bike, or landrover that they can find. Stag hunting is a sport that is followed because of the interest of watching the hounds follow the line of the deer, the way the deer get away and the actions of the deer. They find it much more interesting watching than actually riding. Whereas fox hunting in other parts of England particularly, it is important to a lot of the followers because of the ride. It's fairly immaterial to them so long as the hounds are going off and they have a reason to ride. They like jumping and galloping across country. TY can see the attraction of that. That's not the attraction stag hunting. It's nice to have a good horse so that it doesn't tired and puffed out, and you're left sitting on Room Hill and they have gone up over Dunkery. Riding is not that important. TY thinks this is so for the majority of people not just himself. Of course there are lots of reasons that people go hunting. He asks was it Jorrocks who said that some goes for the ride out to the meet and some goes for the ride home and some to get away from their wives, some to gossip and a few to hunt.

You need the mounted field because they are prepared to pay to do it. If you sit on a road you don't have to pay anything. That's how it is actually financed. The people who are prepared to keep a horse and hunt are the most likely people to pay a subscription. The farmers pay a bit but not much. Originally when the Staghounds were first started until, he thinks, post the Second World War, farmers weren't expected to pay anything. If you were a farmer you said that the deer ate the crops and the galloped over his fields so why should he pay anything. In fact the farmers were paid deer damage if they had damage. If you had a field of turnips eaten you would get the secretary of the hunt to come and look and they would agree a price and they would pay something towards it. That doesn't happen now. Now the farmers have got richer and the hunt has got poorer.

If he had the choice he would always go mounted, most people would. If you got too old it would be different. Fair enough! He thinks it is a great pity young people don't want to ride. But he can understand it. He wasn't very keen himself. It's quite a hassle keeping a horse. It's got to be to be fit so it's got to be exercised, it's got to be shod and brushed. Modern farmers like Timmy and the Hayes boys have got a lot to do. There's never enough staff on the farm now, you can't afford to employ much. So it is much easier to get on a quad bike. You see just as much. You irritate more people but you see as much as on a horse. Even in the rain in the winter you are doing it for pleasure. People don't say they are going hunting because it's a duty or anything like that. You don't take too much notice of the weather if you are a farmer. You're out in it all the time. Very often the hunting is more interesting in bad weather. Sometimes the scent is better. It's just different. It's like anything else in the country, if it's hot and sunny you sit around and do nothing, if it's rainy you do something else.

He became one of the young hunting farmers. There were any amount of them. His aunt Norah then reappeared because her second husband, called Harding, turned over his landrover and killed himself, down below Winsford in the road, whereupon she became widowed again with another son, and came back to the hunt and became secretary. Then eventually she became master. So she did a second tenure and gave up some years ago. [Asks BJ if she remembers Mrs Harding] She is now dead. So TY was even more involved then in a way because he was her nephew. Although he had no official capacity he was relatively responsible and was part of her life. TY's mother was still alive and they [the sisters] would gossip every evening on the telephone. They were very close those two. [Back to top]
 

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JOINING HUNT COMMITTEE / BECOMING CHAIRMAN / BATESON REPORT / POLITICS OF HUNTING / COUNTRYSIDE ALLIANCE / MASTERS OF DEER HOUNDS ASSOCIATION / DEMONSTRATIONS / ISAOH

Then someone put him on the committee of the hunt, which he did for some years then he became vice chairman. The some years when Dick Lloyd gave up, TY became chairman. So, he became chairman, there were always arguments about stag hunting in particular, as opposed to stag hunting in general, and he would like to think that they have more or less won most of those arguments, but there is always another one, and there is always something happening. Anne Mallalieu had rung up at lunchtime that day about some great drama.

He was pitched in a little bit at the deep end. He knew a lot of it because his aunt had been master for so long. So it wasn't a great problem. So then he found himself going on television as chairman, defending hunting. Then the National Trust appointed Professor Bateson. He put out a report that was bad science but people that wanted to believe, believed. They had to fight that. So it goes on and on.

Now he has become involved with the politics of hunting. He's quite often talking to MPs and people like that. Countryside Alliance has had the Campaign for Hunting, then they called it something else. They are always restructuring which is always a rather doubtful ploy. They are now called the Council of Hunting Associations. So they have meetings about once every two months.

As well as being the chairman of the Devon and Somerset Staghounds he is chairman of the Masters of Deer Hounds Association. There are only 3 packs, the Devon and Somerset, the Tiverton and the Quantocks. So he is the politician of the job really. It's interesting and he is pleased to be doing it. Such as anybody knows the answers he hopes he does.

 He's not quite sure if he's the best person to do it. It's not always the best person to do it that wants to do it. He is part of the Countryside Alliance, on the hunting committee [Council for Hunting Associations]. So he knows all the Alliance people and he goes up there [?London] to meetings. He went on the march, the year before last [1999]. He went to the Hyde Park rally before that.

He went to the demonstrations outside parliament. He has never demonstrated before, of course not, he's not that sort of person. The march wasn't a demonstration. It was just what it said. It was just a march. They reckoned that after 300,000 had walked, they couldn't even pick up a fag paper there. You couldn't find anything. Yet when they were demonstrating for gay rights or something you couldn't move for litter. It wasn't a demonstration per se, it was just a show of numbers. There was a great, unbelievable atmosphere. Everybody was laughing and smiling.

So the argument goes on and he is in the thick of it. He has been for 10 years now. He'll probably do it for another 5 years and his view is that hunting will go on. They have set up an organisation now called ISAOH, an Independent Statutory Authority on Hunting. It is their own regulatory authority. They have a retired High Court judge to run it. He has appointed so called independent members to regulate hunting.

They have done it because some people thought that should have been in place anyway. They are not naive enough to think that everybody will think that that is wonderful, but it is a start. There are a lot of people out there who don't want to stop hunting as such and there are a lot who do want to stop it. A lot of people think that if it is regulated with the state having some view in it, that it will placate a lot of people. TY doesn't know if it will. That's happening so he's been involved in that as well. [Back to top]
 

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HUNTING HIS LIFE / FOLLOWING THE LINE / FOX HUNTING / CONSEQUENCES OF A BAN / DEER MANAGEMENT ON EXMOOR / DEER MANAGEMENT SOCIETY / DEER INITIATIVE / RESUMPTION OF HUNTING POST-FOOT AND MOUTH / BUSINESS LINK HELP

Hunting has been his life. He likes watching the deer. The interest is extraordinarily difficult to explain to someone who doesn't know about the countryside. To see a pack of hounds following the line, the scent of an animal is an exciting and interesting thing. Nobody knows why they can sometimes hunt the animal quite well and sometimes they can't. It is so unpredictable, a days hunting. You don't know where you are going to go or what's going to happen. The deer are very interesting animals to hunt. They have so many ways of escaping. They are very good at turning back on themselves, or using the river.

He doesn't know much about fox hunting because he has always lived on Exmoor and he has always hunted the deer. The fox is quite cunning but you have to be quite close to a fox to hunt it well. The scent isn't that strong. They can go well if the fox has gone on 3 or 4 minutes, but if is 30 minutes they can't really hunt it all that well. The interesting about deer hunting is that you can put up the deer and it goes off and you go and get the pack or some more hounds or collect up hounds and wait for half an hour and the hounds will still puzzle out where it went.

He doesn't think the world will stop going round if hunting is banned. He doesn't subscribe to the idea that there will be no red deer left. But he doesn't think people will keep very many because farmers are pretty individual people and they can't really get on with their neighbours. They say that they do but he has been a farmer all his life and he knows that, if the deer were a communal asset, a) to Exmoor, and b) to farms and to hunting that would be fine, because nobody interferes with them. Because if somebody shoots them the other people don't like it. But if they become an asset such as rabbits or pheasants, where if you have them on your land you shoot them, the probability is that you won't want your neighbour - who's pinched one of your daughters or let your cattle out or there has been some family row about 50 years ago - killing lots of deer and selling them. So you do it yourself, or give someone else permission to do it. The cohesion of deer management because of the hunt would go. Even people who don't like hunting agree that.

The British Deer Society who are pretty dubious about hunting because the society is mainly people who like stalking deer with rifles, say there isn't the management of deer anywhere else that there is on Exmoor. TY says BJ could allow people to come and shoot the deer on their farm tomorrow and no one could say anything. She doesn't do it because her father didn't do it, because it's the custom not to. There's nothing to stop you. No one would mind if there were too many, the hunt wouldn't mind. The fact remains that the existence of the hunt means they are a remarkable force in allowing a large amount of deer to roam about largely where they will all over Exmoor.

You don't see it anywhere else. In Scotland where they have half a million red deer, there are fences as high as a room all round farming land and all the forestry. If they get through those fences, they get shot. They say they have the red deer commission in Scotland. TY knows the chairman. They do not have control of the deer in Scotland like the hunt has on Exmoor. All they can do is make each owner of land shoot enough deer to keep the numbers down so they don't do a lot of damage. The lairds in Scotland don't really want that because they want the deer, because for trophy shooting they are quite a lot of money. They don't like killing lots of deer because they are afraid they won't have enough stags the next year.

TY had just had a meeting at his house with the Exmoor district Deer Management Society which was formed 6 years ago in 1994. They have a meeting 2 or 3 times a year or when it's necessary. They have representatives of the hunt, the Badgworthy Land Company, representatives from the National Park, the National Trust and any big land owners. Anybody could come if they wanted to. If any landowner had a problem with deer they could ask to come, or probably get someone to ask their question for them. They like to think that it is fairly democratic.

There is something called the Deer Initiative that has started up in the country relatively recently and they are supposed to be putting together deer management in England. He rang them up because he found out they had been to Exmoor and he thought it was funny they didn't know anything about it. The chap had been to the League Against Cruel Sports sanctuary. TY told him that that was only one small part of Exmoor. He asked if there were any deer management societies. TY told him they did and had 5 or 600 members. They had 260 people willing to count the deer every year. TY pointed out to him that he had a deer management society with only about 20 people in it. He agreed that TY was right. The deer management on Exmoor is good. There is some on the Quantocks and around Tiverton but it is very effective on Exmoor. Everybody knows what everybody else is doing. Everybody knows where the deer are. Now there is no hunting this autumn, everybody is out watching the deer with binoculars all day long. There's nothing they don't know and if they don't know they will make it up.

There is no hunting at the moment because of the foot and mouth epidemic. They think that DEFRA will start licensing fox hunting possibly before Christmas, in the 3 counties, certainly after Christmas. Deer hunting will probably have to wait a bit. It's desperate for the finances of the hunt. Their annual budget is in the region of £200,000, that they have to get to run it because there are 7 staff, there is the feeding of the animals, the running of the vehicles. A third of that comes from peoples subscriptions. People had been very good that year sending their subscriptions without knowing if they would go hunting. There area lot of other things that people get up, whist drives and so on. The main source of income is the people who join in on a horse or watch the hunt. They are obviously not coming because of foot and mouth so they have a problem.

They have asked something called Business Link who are offering small businesses help but they have predictably said they don't wan to get involved with hunting. Their accountant queried that because they employ 7 people so they were allowed to put their case. They had to show that their income dropped by 60%-70% in February and March or April, which of course it did, so they have accepted them for help. He doesn't think they give any money. They might teach someone how to run a computer. [Back to top]
 

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CONSEQUENCES OF A HUNTING BAN

They will have to disband if hunting is banned, but he doesn't acknowledge that it will be. He knows that he is prejudiced but for all the people who come to Exmoor in the spring and the autumn, the hunting is an integral part of Exmoor. If you take that away they just won't come. There have been some tourists, couples you see walking about in Dulverton, but they are not the sort of people who spend lots of money. The hunting visitors are good at spending money, drinking whisky and that sort of thing.

Exmoor would struggle through in the summer anyway because people come to Exmoor for other reasons, walking and things like that. If you take away the horses that are kept, the grooms, the pubs where people stay, the blacksmiths, the people who go in the village shops, all that, it's a big issue. There have been big issues bandied about but Somerset's official figures, the result of their investigations, suggest that four and half million pound was the sort of figure that hunting introduced onto Exmoor.

He doesn't subscribe to the idea that people will go on hunting if it is banned. You couldn't, because you couldn't hunt without the preparation, and the preparation would be obvious enough and everybody else would know. You can't hide your hunting. When people say a deer has been killed in someone's garden or in the river and photos are taken of it and it isn't very nice, TY says of course it isn't. He agrees. Sometimes things go wrong, but it is a public sport. It is a participant past time. The fact that they couldn't even if they wanted to, do it surreptitiously, means they are as careful as possible to get it right.

People who go out with a rifle don't have that problem. He's seen lots of deer not killed by a rifle. Whatever anyone else says it is not an easy job to shoot dead a great big animal like a deer with a rifle. He's seen someone in Scotland have 7 shots at one. It does happen. Things go wrong. When Roger Harris, their equivalent of Patrick Bateson, made his investigation (they did one of their own), he had 12 shot deer that he took blood from. He went with the stalkers and took blood from 12 different deer, to compare with blood from the deer that they had hunted. Of those 12, 5 weren't dead because of the shot. 2 of them, 1 they took half an hour to find, 1 they took 20 minutes to find. 3 of them were paraplegic. They were paralysed because they were shot in the neck, which often happens apparently. They couldn't move but they weren't dead. You never hear about that sort of thing. You can't defend one sport by attacking another. He's sure that people with rifles do the best they can. Of course they do, but it doesn't always work. So in welfare terms TY has a difficult problem. He can't keep on saying not to tell him that they are going to shoot them The people who don't like hunting say why can't you just shoot them, it's easy. But a) it's not the culture; b) it doesn't always work; c) you can't find the wounded ones; and d) the people that keep the deer, it's not what they want. [Back to top]
 

3/8

HIGH SHERIFF

TY was High Sheriff for a year. He was nominated by Christopher [Thomas] Everard. That is something the High Sheriff does during his year. He has to nominate during his year someone for about three years afterwards. He wrote and told TY that he proposed to nominate him. TY rang up and said that he didn't know anything about it and he would hate it, and that he was not that sort of person and that he wasn't suitable. Christopher Everard said that he had enjoyed it a lot and he had been on HMS Dulverton. TY didn't disagree and it was a long time ahead and he wasn't too bothered about it.

Sadly the chap who was going to be High Sheriff a couple of years after Christopher, TY had met him, rang him and told him he had recurring cancer and he had to have treatment so he couldn't do it the next year. TY should have been the year after that. So TY had to jump forward more than a year which actually made it easier because he could use it as an excuse for having so much to do. [refers to forgetting appointment with BJ]

The job is what you want to make of it really. The only contribution that TY made to public life as it were was that he had been on the Exmoor National Park Committee for a couple of years. He was on the regional committee for the National Trust for some years, which he enjoyed. Other than that he didn't know anything about local government. Nor did he want to, but as High Sheriff you do meet all the people in the county that are part of local government, if they want to meet you and you want to meet them.

TY and his wife Margaret went lots of church services, inaugural services for mayors, meetings and bun-fights, things like that which they enjoyed a lot more than they thought they would. They would for example have an invitation from someone like the mayor of Glastonbury. TY assumed that if he was High Sheriff he had to go. Sometimes there were two things clashing. Then he would dress up in silly clothes and along he would go. He would go to church. He's not a great churchgoer, but it doesn't worry him, Then you would parade out of the church with a lot of mayors. They called them the chain gang because they all had there medals on.

He wore velvet breeches and tights and swords and hats and all that sort of stuff. There was a great ruffle. His wife didn't have to wear something special, she just had to borrow a lot of clothes from her friends! They went to all these things and made lots of friends. He can't remember all their names. He may never see them again. When you meet different people they are always very nice. They had a great time.

Annually they had services, blessing for the council or the mayor in churches of their choice. It might be a chapel in Weston-Super-Mare. It was a catholic church once, but mostly it was high church. It could have been Taunton or Wells Cathedral or Glastonbury Abbey. They went to Wells a lot, which they enjoyed, you couldn't not want to go to Wells Cathedral.

In theory there is authority with the position, but in practice there isn't. You are supposed to be responsible for people paying their debts. If you haven't paid hire purchase on your cooker you get an order, and eventually they come and take away the property. This has to be signed by the High Sheriff. He doesn't remember ever signing anything. There are bailiffs who expropriate your property who are supposed to be under the jurisdiction of the sheriff. There is actually somebody who is called an under- sheriff who is paid and is a solicitor. He would do that part of it.

You are supposed to entertain judges, at the local assizes. Well there aren't any in Somerset. He went to other counties. He went to other High Sheriff's events. He went, couple of times to lunches at the Peace Authority building with other people. It was shaking hands and saying hello really. They compared notes on what they were doing.

There is a charity run by the High Sheriffs, which he helped with for a bit. It's a charity for providing something for young people to do rather than get into trouble on the streets. In a way he felt that he was High Sheriff for Exmoor and West Somerset, because that is what he knew about and there aren't any children bashing up and vandalising the streets where he lives. Bridgwater and round there is more socially deprived. The charity had done a lot of good giving money and doing up Bridgwater canal, and providing a skate-boarding park. He did a bit of that but has walked away from it since. They are such depressing meetings. The present High Sheriff is very keen on it. The last year's High Sheriff was very keen on it. He's sure he has done it very well.

He went to Exeter Court a bit. It was very interesting. He doesn't know that he was doing much good to it. He went to Taunton. They had a high court judge who came to Taunton which is unusual. The High Sheriff is sort of the Queen's representative, so the High Sheriff is responsible for the safety and well-being of the judges. What it actually means is that you ask them to supper.

You have a legal service at Wells Cathedral once a year. So when he gave up being High Sheriff he asked all the judges and they had a great lunch, which he had to pay for. There's a bit of that sort of thing. It's harmless enough. He's done it and that is that. Nobody would want to do it all the time. People just do it for year. Some people put a lot into it. Some people put little into it. He probably put a little into it.

He quite enjoyed it. They put a tent up on the field out there. They had what they call a garden party, which is pretty depressing past time really but they bought lots of cheap wine and some smoked salmon sandwiches. They asked lots of people and they all came. He thought that was amazing really. He had one party for Exmoor friends, acquaintances and people and one for all these mayors and people elsewhere. So they had 700 hundred people over two nights. [Back to top]
 

3/9

RECREATION / BEING A FARMER / HOLIDAYS / THE BARLE VALLEY / POKING ABOUT

Apart from hunting TY thinks he's too old to do much recreating. They know lots of people on the moor. They have people to supper. He doesn't know what the hell he does do really! He reads the Telegraph every morning. He reads quite a bit. He should read the Horse and Hound. The Telegraph keeps him going. His son Tim calls it 'The Torygraph' quite rightly. He understands why.

You don't ever stop being a farmer, although Timmy does most of the work, he does that quite a bit. He doesn't mind that. They have a house in the Dordogne for holidays, which his mother bought for £4000. He thinks it's worth about £8000 now. It's just a base. He and his wife Margaret and sometimes his friends go, generally in May and September. It's not much fun down there when France is on holiday, but the rest of the time it's magical.

They have friends in Italy. They go there a bit. They have daughter who lives south of Paris, so they go there a bit. He goes to Scotland fishing once a year. He didn't go that year because of the foot and mouth.

His favourite spot on Exmoor is just round the corner up above Thornton's bridge in the Barle valley. He reckons the Barle valley is the most beautiful valley he has ever seen. He's seen quite a few. On the continent you see lots of river valleys, the Gorge du Tarn and the Aveyron, the Auvergne, the Ardeche, the Vienne and all those places. He doesn't think you will find anything prettier than the Barle. If you walk up from Marsh Bridge towards Tarr Steps, it's magical. That's his favourite place.

If he's feeling miserable he has a large drink and decide where he could go for a holiday for a few days. He and Margaret both like, she less than him, getting in the car and driving off, having a look at other parts of this country, or preferably abroad. He doesn't want to go to Africa or New Zealand particularly although they have friends in New Zealand, who say come over. He just likes poking about in France and Italy, stopping just when he has time to stop and looking round so that would be his pasttime which he can go on doing even when he gets older. He can't ride and fish and shoot as he gets older. He'll leave that to others.

[RECORDING ENDS] [Back to top]