Welsh Journals

Search over 450 titles and 1.2 million pages

FURTHER GAMEBOOK RECORDS FROM WELSH ESTATES Previous papers in this series1 discussed records of Pheasants, Partridges and Hares from the gamebooks of Welsh estates. Subsequently the author has had the opportunity, through the kindness of Mr. C. H. W. Griffith, Col. M. H. Maxwell and Mr. H. L. Knight, of examining the gamebooks relating to the Stackpole Court estate in Pembrokeshire, and the Dunraven and the Tythegston Court estates, both in Glamorgan and situated within a few miles of each other. The significance of such records is cumulative and the more interesting records for these estates are therefore detailed and discussed here. The gamebooks for the Stackpole Court estate, in a rather isolated coastal region of south-west Pembrokeshire, comprise the longest and most complete series of figures yet examined, commencing with the season 1823-24 and continuing with only minor omissions up to the season 1938-39, a period of 116 years. Some idea of Stackpole Court as it was, not long before the time the gamebook records begin, is given by Fenton's account2 published in 1810. After describing the house he refers to 'the park, of great compass, and well stocked with deer, but wanting a belt of trees to hide the barren sand-banks without it, and produce shelter where most wanted by breaking the sea-breeze; and otherwise deficient in wood, though that defect, from the numerous young thriving plantations every where judiciously scattered, is likely soon to be obviated. The hills skirting the lake on the house, and forming its boundary, are richly wooded in every direction, as are the pleasure-grounds and shrubbery in front. Between the park and the sea there is a warren, consisting of a vast tract of burrows formed by mountains of sand consolidated by that valuable plant, mdrhesg, sea-weed grass; abounding with rabbits, a valuable appendage to a great man's residence A charming piece of water admirably planned now fills the vale under the house The lake is most abundantly stocked with aquatic wild fowl of every sort, if wild they may be called, that collect at a call, and come in flocks to dry land to be fed like barn-door poultry. But to sum up the importance of Stackpool, it stands in the midst of a contiguous property of fifteen thousand acres of the most valuable land, without the intervention of one incapable of cultivation.' The different uses to which the 'contiguous property of fifteen thousand acres' have been put is illustrated in Fig. 1, adapted from part of the map (sheet 99) of the Pembroke and Tenby area published in Dr. Dudley Stamp's Land Utilisation Survey of Britain series, and showing the utilisation of the Stackpole area in the years 1931-33, just about the end of the period covered by the gamebooks. Apart from a fairly continuous coastal fringe classified as heath or 1 'Gamebook Records of Pheasants and Partridges in Wales', National Library of Wales Journal, Vol. 9, 1956, pp. 287-294, and 'Pheasant and Hare Records from Welsh Gamebooks', ibid., Vol. 10, 1957, pp. 205-214; while three articles on Welsh gamebook records of Partridges have appeared in British Birds, Vol. 46, 1953, pp. 57-64; Vol. 49, 1956, pp. 112-114; and Vol. 50, 1957, pp. 534-536. 2 Richard Fenton, A Historical Tour through Pembrokeshire, London, 1810, pp. 419-421.