Serie 12 - Trinity Foot Beagles

This club was founded in 1862 although there were packs kept in Cambridge before this date which were the fore runners of the club.

In 1862 R. G. Hoare (Trinity College) brought his private pack of beagles to Cambridge and in 1867 W. E. Currey (Trinity College, Tutor) brought his beagles over from his home in Ireland. These two packs established beagling firmly in Cambridge.

According to The Trinity Foot Beagles 1862 – 1912 by F. Claude Kempson published in 1912 the Trinity Foot Beagles were a subscription pack managed by undergraduates and hunted in the countryside around Cambridge. There was no formal constitution, no committee, nor any meeting of the subscribers, nor a balance-sheet, nor any positive connection with Trinity College, although traditionally there are strong links with both Trinity and Magdalene Colleges. Any member of the University was welcome to join in as long as he paid a subscription.

Kempson credits William Edward Currey (Trinity College) as being the founder and Rowland Hunt (Magdalene College) as being co-founder.

Further reading: The Trinity Foot Beagles 1862 – 1912 by F. Claude Kempson:

https://ia800205.us.archive.org/22/items/trinityfootbeagl00kemp/trinityfootbeagl00kemp.pdf

More records are held by Trinity College, Cambridge as follows:

Two histories on the open shelves: The Trinity Foot Beagles 1862 – 1912 by F. Claude Kempson and The Trinity Foot Beagles: a history of the pack and a description of the Sporting Cantab, with appendices on the Cambridge University Drag Hounds and the Whip Club (London: Allen, 1980) by James Know. Knox’s history is short (134 pp.) but has a good index to names mentioned and a list of Masters up to 1980, and a roll of honour explaining the pedigrees of the hounds.

A small volume kept by Henry Cooper Wood (Trinity 1897), who was a whip for the year 1899-1900, with his notes, printed reports, and three menus for the Beagle Club [shelfmark REC 60.1]

A photograph of the Trinity Foot Beagles from 1946 which was sold as part of a sale at Mallams that featured quite a number of Pearson family materials, and was sold with a much earlier album belonging to Christ’s student Robert Chilton Pearson [shelfmark Add. PG 161]

A scrapbook which belonged to Clement Wakefield Jones (Trinity 1899) which includes a fixture card for 1900 and the fronts of some menus for the Beagle Club (firmly pasted closed), but with two interesting notices to members about the traditional Farmers Lunch at Cottenham, (one Feb. 14 1901: “Last term only three of the field subscribed to the lunch, so that practically all our share of the expenses came out of the Master’s pocket.”). [shelfmark Add. MS a. 690]

Items in the Henry Jackson papers [shelfmark Add. MS a.289-290], including a folder with correspondence about W. A. Currey and references to Jackson’s article about him in the Cambridge Review (c. 1908-1909) and a copy of an article, “The Father of Cambridge Beagling” by J. Wentworth Day from Country Life, dated 1 October 1959.