page_title: Devon and Somerset Staghounds
section_title: Devon and Somerset Staghounds
hierarchical_section_title: Devon and Somerset Staghounds / List of masters / Devon and Somerset Staghounds
caption_attribution_description: Caricature of Mordaunt Fenwick Bisset MP. Caption read "The General".
context_page_description: The deer of Exmoor have been hunted since Norman times, when Exmoor was declared a Royal Forest. Collyns stated the earliest actual record of a pack of staghounds on Exmoor was 1598. In 1803 the "North Devon Staghounds" became a subscription pack. In 1824/5 30 couples of hounds, the last of the true staghounds, were sold to a baron in Germany. Today, the Devon and Somerset is one of three staghounds packs in the UK, the others being the Quantock Staghounds and the Tiverton Staghounds. All packs hunt within Devon and Somerset. The Chairman in 2016 is Tom Yandle, High Sheriff of Somerset in 1999.
context_section_description: 1837–1841 – Charles Palk Collyns (1793–1864) formed a new pack, named "Devon and Somerset Subscription Staghounds". Collyns, a doctor living at Bilboa House, Dulverton, was the youngest son of William Collyns, a surgeon of Kenton, near Exeter, Devon. He was possibly related to the family of the Palk baronets of Haldon House, in the Haldon Hills, near Kenton. His hunting diaries and subscription lists are held by Somerset Archives. He wrote the standard work on west-country stag-hunting "Chase of the Wild Red Deer", 1862. His inscribed grave stone, next to that of his son, survives against the external eastern wall of Dulverton Church, the only two stones in that position, clearly one of some honour.
  1842–1847 – Hon. Newton Fellowes (1772–Jan. 1854), of Eggesford, brother-in-law of Hugh Fortescue, 2nd Earl Fortescue. He was the second son of John Wallop, 2nd Earl of Portsmouth (d.1797) by his wife Urania Fellowes, heiress of Eggesford. Newton received from his mother the Eggesford estate, his elder brother having inherited in 1797 the earldom and his paternal lands in Hampshire. Newton demolished the old Eggesford House next to Eggesford Church and rebuilt it on the opposite side of the hill on the site of the former Heywood House. This house was in ruins in 1995, but was shortly thereafter restored.  He was a keen 4-in-hand carriage driver and improved many of the roads near Eggesford to facilitate his driving. He built the present bridge over the River Taw across which the A377 "scenic route" was built in about 1830 as a toll road. He married in 1820 as his second wife Lady Catherine Fortescue (1787-20/5/1854), a daughter of Hugh Fortescue, 1st Earl Fortescue (1753–1841) of Castle Hill, Filleigh. He became 4th Earl of Portsmouth in the last year of his life, following the death of his elder brother John Wallop, 3rd Earl of Portsmouth in 1853, the latter having had only one daughter and having been declared insane since 1809.
  1855–1881 – Mordaunt Fenwick-Bisset (1825–1884). "Restored the sport and put it on the footing from whence the present flourishing state of things has come", (Everard, 1902, p. 366). He reintroduced red deer to the Quantock Hills and built kennels at Bagborough House, a few miles north-west of Taunton. He lived at Pixton Park, Dulverton, which he rented from Lord Carnarvon, and kennelled the hounds at Jury, at the bottom of Pixton Drive. In January 1879 the pack was destroyed due to rabies. He sat as MP for West Somerset from 1880 until his resignation in 1883.
  1880/81–1887 – Hugh Fortescue, Viscount Ebrington (1854–1932), 4th Earl Fortescue from 1905. After 1879 he acquired the reversion of the whole of the former Royal Forest of Exmoor after the death of Frederick Winn Knight, which occurred in 1897.
  1887–1893 – Charles Henry Basset, Esq. (1834–1908), (born Williams) of Watermouth Castle, near Lynmouth, JP, DL and MP for Barnstaple (1868–1874). Born 16 November 1834, being the fourth surviving son of Sir William Williams, 1st Baronet (1791–1870), MFH, of Tregullow, Cornwall, by his wife Caroline Eales, younger daughter of Richard Eales of Eastdon, Lieutenant RN. Aged 13 he entered the Navy as cadet on HMS Southampton. He served during the Crimean War in the Black Sea, and Sea of Azof, and was a Major in the Royal North Devon Yeomanry (or Hussars). In 1873 he lost his left arm in an accident whilst working a steam engine at Barnstaple. He married on 7 January 1878, Harriet Mary Basset (d.1920), only daughter and sole heiress of Arthur Davie Basset, Esq., of Watermouth Castle (son of Joseph Davie Bassett (1764-1846)), and sister and co-heiress of Reverend Arthur Crawfurth Davie Basset, (1830–1880) JP and MA, also of Watermouth. As a condition of his inheritance he assumed for himself his wife and their progeny by Royal Licence dated 11 October 1880 the surname of Basset in lieu of his patronymic, with the arms of Basset. Armorial bearings: Barry wavy of six or and gules in the centre chief point a cross crosslet of the last Crest: on a wreath of the colours, a unicorn's head couped argent, the mane,
caption: "The General". Mordaunt Fenwick-Bisset, MP, (1825–1884), Master 1855-1881, as caricatured by Spy in Vanity Fair, December 1881. He built the present kennels in Exford in 1876 and donated them to the Committee
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