The South Devon has a rich history going back to the early 1800s, and continues to keep the tradition of riding to scent-hounds alive over two centuries later.
George Templer
George Templer was a major local landowner, inheriting a range of important local industries from his father James Templer and grandather, also James Templer. The Templer family had made their fortune when the older James won the contract to rebuild Plymouth dockyard, using granite from Haytor. He built the grand Stover House (now the location of Stover School), and the younger James continued the family business, expanding into ball clay and building the Stover Canal.
George was the third generation into the family business, and still owned the quarries at Haytor, building the Haytor Granite Tramway to transport rocks from the quarry down to his Stover Canal, and onto the docks he owned at Teignmouth.
As a keen sportsman, George kept a pack of foxhounds at Stover from the early 1800s, and these were the basis of the South Devon Hunt. He learnt much from the sporting parson, Jack Russell (later of terrier fame), and by 1810, South Devon hounds were being drafted to the prestigious Belvoir Hunt, which is a mark of some distinction and must have indicated their quality.
Much like the modern hunt, Templer was focused on the sport, rather than the killing of foxes. Whilst the modern hunt follows a scent and call off when live quarry is found, in those times George would catch and release foxes the hounds came upon, rather than kill them. One fox – the Bold Dragoon – was noted as being caught no fewer than thirty-six times.
He was a better sportman than businessman, and ended up having to sell most of his estate to the Duke of Somerset, although he remained the company’s main agent, and still managed to sell the granite for London Bridge.
This did mean the sale of Stover, of which he wrote this poem.
Stover, farewell! Still fancy’s hand shall trace
Thy pleasures past in all their former grace;
And I will wear and cherish, though we part,
The dear remembrance ever at my heart.
Not as the hare whom hounds and horn pursue
In timid constancy I cling to you;
But, like the bolder chase, resolved, I fly,
That where I may not live I will not die.George Templer
He later returned to the area after a few years abroad and built the large Sandford Orleigh house only a couple of miles from his old estate at Stover. He also returned to the hunt, but sadly died at home in 1843, following an accident whilst hunting.