Quorn Hunt

The Weslyan Chapel with the Church of St Mary in the background.

[Can anyone confirm the law mentioned below?]

Interviewer: I believe that the Quorn Hunt use Wymeswold as part of their land for hunting on. Can you remember anything particular…

Mrs Smith: Yes, they’ve come ever since I can remember, and still do of course. They meet in Wymeswold square. I think now they go further up the lane because of the traffic congestion they cause. But in my young day the school master used to allow us, our forms, on the wall outside, we stood on the forms, and we could see all these beautiful horses and their riders. One day when my brother was watching, he saw something, and they had to write a composition in school that morning of what they’d seen. My brother, John, was suddenly smacked across his face, and he says, ‘Please sir, what’s that for, I haven’t done anything wrong.’ He says, ‘You mustn’t write things about the Prince of Wales, that’s wrong.’ He says, ‘Please sir, it wasn’t wrong.’ And the school master gave him another smack. But when the school master read all the other compositions and found that 90% of the boys had written the same thing in different ways, he apologised to my brother John. And apparently all these boys had seen the Prince of Wales urinate down his horse’s shoulder, and the schoolmaster couldn’t believe it, so he did a bit of research on this and he found that if a man was in charge of a horse and couldn’t lead the horse with safety then that was allowed, by law it was allowed. And that law still remains today. And when this school master did his research, he finished his little speech to the children by saying, ‘…and the London cabbies bless this rule.’ And then when I was a very small child the Quorn Hunt, you know, they used to have what they called the Quorn Hunt Races. My father and mother, it was a yearly outing for them and the Quorn Hunt prepared a magnificent mid-day meal for them and a ticket for going in. But in my day, since the hunt met on our land, they gave us a ticket to enter the races and a ticket, a free pass for your car, and then in the early days they just gave you a bag with a lunch in. Then in later years you were allowed just a ticket to go in and parking for your car but you weren’t given any food.

Interviewer: Where were the Quorn races held?

Mrs Smith: At Melton Mowbray, yes, the other side of Melton Mowbray.

©EMOHA