MUSKERRY& UNITED 11 November
Muskerry & United, Lisgoold, Co Cork
AMONG the many perks of being a hunting correspondent is the fact that you are so often seeing a country for the first time, with only a vague notion of what may lie ahead. For the hunt staff and the mounted field to be similarly venturing into terra incognita is an unusual state of affairs, but that was the case on the day of my visit to the Muskerry & United in Co Cork.
The Muskerry, established in 1742, has a solid claim on being Ireland's oldest hunt. The United was originally founded in 1825, but the pack was disbanded and the country reconfigured several times before settling down in its modern form under the mastership of the fifth Earl of Shannon in 1871.
The two hunts, with territories on either side of Cork, amalgamated earlier this year, and the Muskerry hounds moved to the United's state-ofthe-art kennels in March.
“The Muskerry
