Fox Hunting Howe Bridge and Hackness

Before the campaign against fox hunting had really taken off, Yorkshire farmer Stanley Carr took his camera out to film several fox hunts on several occasions around Howe Bridge, in the Low Marishes near Malton, and around Hackness in the North York Moors. The films are unusual in showing extensive footage of the hunts as they chase foxes across the countryside, having unearthed them from coverts with a Fox Terrier. At the end we see the results of a fox being caught by hounds.

Stanley Carr lived at Poplar Farm, East Heslerton, near Malton, with his wife Enid and daughter Janet. Fox hunting is now illegal in Britain following the 2005 Hunting Act, although it is still a highly contested area. There remain 176 fox hound packs, including the Staintondale Hunt in this area, and they still go out – up to a quarter of a million turn out for Boxing Day hunts – now purportedly on just “drag hunts”, using chemical trails, or “trail hunts”, laying a fox's scent, although many claim that little has changed. The League Against Cruel Sports, although founded in 1924, didn’t really up its campaign against fox hunting until the 1950s, but it would have still been in its early days when this film was shot.