Sporting rights

The pursuit and hunting of deer in the high middle-ages and into the early modern period has already been mentioned. It was still exploited as a private forest in the early Elizabethan period but cannot have survived the division and sale of the forest areas by Lord Stafford.

Field names at Westcott and New Leasows suggest the former presence of cockshuts for the trapping of woodcock and in Habberley Office there were still cockshuts in the early 16th century rentals and woodcock were still common in Hogstow until the later 17th century. They are still found in Huglith wood adjacent to Westcott.

In the 1600s tenants of the lordship were presented for owning greyhounds or lurchers presumably used for the coursing of hares. In the mid 18th century Thomas Hill employed the tenant of Gatten Lodge, Thomas Home, as his gamekeeper. In the later 1750’s he is known to have coursed hares for his master and others certainly did so later on the New Leasows ground.

In the later 18th and early 19th century the keeper normally occupied a cottage above Gittinshay rent-free though his duties are not defined. Sporting rights were notionally valued at the sale of the property in (Gatten estate archives; title deeds). However there is no evidence that the sporting potential was really developed until after the sale of the property to Jonah? Harrop in 1857 and the conversion of the Lodge into a gentry property.

The building of The Kennels by the Habberley Brook below Westcott in 1875 suggests that the estate was being run on sporting lines.

It was alleged in 1908 that there were no grouse on the Longmynd until the introduction of several pairs from Yorkshire in the 1840’s (VCH I, 178 : Ibid., X, 87 ). However, in 1838 Thomas Eyton claimed that they were “common ……. on the Stiperstones” and therefore they must be indigenous ( T.Wall, “The Red Grouse in Shropshire.”, Shropshire Naturalist, vol. 1, no.2 1992, pp.18-23). The Gatten grouse shoot began before 1911 when 115 brace were shot and the game book shows that in the four seasons 1932-5 the annual bag was between 17 and 55 brace. Records for the 1950’s record a bag of two to 32 brace a year, in the 1970’s four to 12 brace and in the 80’s five to 15 brace.

In the early 1990’s the breeding population was down to only five to 10 pairs (Ibid.) Before 1923 the Harrop’s may have leased the sporting rights of Lord Tankerville’s half of the Stiperstones common which they purchased in 1923. Grouse were a notable feature of shooting on the estate in the 1930’s and drystone shooting butts amongst the heather date from this period. As properties on the estate were sold in the last quarter of the 20th century shooting rights were retained and from the later 1980’s the whole was let as a commercial pheasant shoot.