Willie Poole

[Judgemental]

It is with immense sadness to report that Willie Poole has died.

Anybody who knew Willie, hunted with him and read his many entertaining pieces will be greatly saddened.

The report from today's Daily Telegraph:

"POOLE Willy (RWF) passed away quietly at home on the Isle of Wight on Friday 18th August aged 76 years".

 

[FemelleReynard]

That's a real shame, I really enjoyed his blog. May he Rest in Peace.

 

[Alec Swan]

A wonderful writer, a self-deprecating man who's writings never failed to raise my spirits. A gentleman to boot, I've no doubt. I was only thinking of WFP a couple of days ago J-M and thought to write to see if you had any news.

Rest in Peace Sir, you were a rarity in life and I've no doubt that when standing before the pearly gates, you will be a welcome addition to the normal and hunting inhabitants!

Alec.

 

[fburton]

How sad... Although I am not a hunting person, I used to enjoy reading his column in H&H way back when for his humour and colourful turn of phrase.

RIP Mr Poole.

 

[Clodagh]

So vey sad. If you can get hold of any of his books they are just wonderful, I laugh until I cry.

 

[Haniki]

Sad news, I used to read his column in H&H too and I have his book on hunting.

 

[The Fuzzy Furry]

V sad to read this, am another who used to follow his column in H&H, his books are wonderful.
RIP Willie

 

[Orangehorse]

Me too, I was a big fan of his writing. Not all that old either ........................

 

[Judgemental]

Knowing Willie was not only a privilege but an inspiration. I am sure the H & H will provide a fitting obituary. But I thought I would share a little vignette, not only having hunted with Willie but also been badger digging with him as he was a friend of my father. I can always remember Willie, sitting on a stump in a glade barely lit by the summer sun. Smoking his pipe, surrounded by a small 'pack' of terriers, normally patterdales, holding forth on matters of the countryside. He was an excellent judge of character of men, women and hounds. He was talking about the hunting and at the time of a labour government was in power. He said, "if we get stopped, we will know what we did was right" and looking at me said, "your generation will know why, amongst other things, we fought a bloody war". The way things are in Europe, one wonders.

 

[Judgemental]

Knowing Willie was not only a privilege but an inspiration. I am sure the H & H will provide a fitting obituary. But I thought I would share a little vignette, not only having hunted with Willie but also been badger digging with him as he was a friend of my father. I can always remember Willie, sitting on a stump in a glade barely lit by the summer sun. Smoking his pipe, surrounded by a small 'pack' of terriers, normally patterdales, holding forth on matters of the countryside. He was an excellent judge of character of men, women and hounds. He was talking about the hunting and at the time of a labour government was in power. He said, "if we get stopped, we will know what we did was right" and looking at me said, "your generation will know why, amongst other things, we fought a bloody war". The way things are in Europe, one wonders.

For the devotees of history, this was circa 1967 when the labour prime minister, Harold Wilson was in office. So fifty years ago.

 

[Judgemental]

Obituaries
RWF 'Willy' Poole, countryman and writer – obituary

Willy Poole at Powburn in 1996 CREDIT: TED DITCHBURN
25 AUGUST 2017 • 6:00PM
RWF “Willy” Poole, who has died aged 76, was a regarded master of foxhounds of five packs whose rural writing made him a highly popular figure in the English countryside.

He published seven books on hunting, some drawn from his weekly Telegraph columns written in the 1990s, and two saucy novels, banned by WH Smith on the grounds that they included sex, violence and hunting.

With his Old Etonian bow tie and military-style moustache, Poole was a countryman to his boots. His hounds loved him, and he loved them and, for a man who was a gregarious raconteur, he prized his solitude. Sent to London to train as an accountant he missed the curlews of his Cornish upbringing on the Fowey estuary and proclaimed: “That has been my measure ever since. I do not wish to live anywhere where the curlews do not come.”

Willy Poole with his terrier Pip
Willy Poole with his terrier Pip CREDIT: RAOUL DIXON/ NORTH NEWS & PICTURES
Robert William Frederick Poole was born on December 18 1940 at Yeovil, where his father Robert was stationed before being incarcerated in Changi jail in Singapore in 1942. His grandfather, Major General Sir Frederick Poole, had commanded a Cossack regiment at the beginning of the Russian Revolution, from which his grandson inherited a Cossack sabre.

Young Poole was brought up by his maternal grandmother in Cornwall and educated at Eton, which he found “uniformly dreary, I shone neither academically or socially”. He did, however, “learn to love books and solitude” and went out with the College beagles, acquiring a love of hounds and landscape which would inform his life.

In London he soon swapped his accommodation in Kensington for a caravan behind the kennels of the Bisley and Sandhurst foxhounds. From here he commuted to the capital, but not before he had walked the hounds out in the morning.

In 1964, Poole applied for and was accepted to be the sole master and amateur huntsman of the Dartmoor foxhounds. The guarantee (the sum of money raised by the hunt to fund all its activities) was £2,000 a year. “I paid my kennel huntsman eight pounds a week, with five pounds for myself,” he recalled of his three seasons.

Willy Poole in 1997 building his own shed
Willy Poole in 1997 building his own shed CREDIT: STUART OUTTERSIDE
A move to the more prosperous Wilton in 1967 saw little change in Poole’s financial circumstances. A former MFH and huntsman of the South Dorset at this time, Alastair Jackson, who was to become a lifelong friend, recalls: “In the summer Willy would take the kennel mower and mow people’s lawns to earn a bob or two. But he was always immensely good company and would invariably end up drinking whisky on the sofa with them.”

He also established a small pack of bloodhounds and Jackson recalls them hunting a young man in a dinner jacket (as the “quarry&#8221 with a smelly sock as the scent over Cranborne Chase. The quarry was the future joint master of the Cottesmore and bloodstock agent, Charlie Gordon-Watson.

In 1971, during a short hiatus in his career as a master and amateur huntsman, he drove lorries and became a deckhand on a Panamanian coaster. But by 1973 he was back hunting, this time at the Taunton Vale. His joint master was Sue Clarke, whom he had married in 1972, in spite of her earlier vow never to marry a master of foxhounds. “We have had our ups and downs, but tremendous fun as well,” she has said.

Moving to the Sinnington in Yorkshire in 1976, the next six seasons saw Poole at his very best. There were regular points of between four to six miles. Michael Clayton, for 25 years editor of Horse & Hound, recalls hunting with Poole at the Sinnington in December 1978. “The best run I have had so far this season,” Clayton noted in his diary. “This I put down to Willy’s excellent handling of his pack and his introduction of Welsh hound breeding lines using the famous New Forest Medyg (’69).”

Poole’s final mastership (1982-90) was with the West Percy in Northumberland where he loved the taciturn farmers and the wild Cheviot country. But, after more than 2,000 days in the saddle, and by now weighing 18 stone, he retired, writing candidly in his diary: “I had lost my nerve.”

Willy Poole demonstrating a 'food sensitivity' machine' of his own devising
Willy Poole demonstrating a 'food sensitivity' machine' of his own devising CREDIT: ELEANOR BENTALL
Thereafter he hunted on a quad bike with The Border foxhounds whose long serving master, Michael Hedley, recalls Poole’s love of the company of shepherds, farmers and the summer shows. At these Poole, otherwise something of a nervous after dinner speaker, could often be prevailed upon to sing the songs of his Cornish childhood.

It was now that Poole’s writing took off, primarily for The Daily Telegraph, Horse & Hound and the Shooting Times. His Telegraph editor Max Hastings came to stay at Breamish Parks, the smallholding in which the Pooles lived with panoramic views of the Cheviots, and went out hunting. “He had a fall and we were in a flap about that, but he got back on and finished the day,” Sue Poole has recalled.

Hastings wrote of Poole: “One cannot quite say of Willy Poole, as Surtees wrote of one of his Victorian foxhunting characters, that he has hunted hounds all his life on nothing a year, paid quarterly. But it can certainly be said that he is one of those immensely lucky people who have defied discretion to fashion a life for himself that he loved utterly.”

With the arrival of the impending hunting ban in 2004, the Pooles moved to France. “I could not live in an England with no hunting,” Poole said at the time. From France, he continued to write humorous articles about the Englishman abroad.

Willy Poole at Montes Cigar Store and Club in Sloane Street, London
Willy Poole at Montes Cigar Store and Club in Sloane Street, London CREDIT: JIMMY GASTON
Poole’s books included The Cheviot Ranter; A Backwoodsman’s Year; The Rustic Scribe, and a wonderful commentary on the epic poem A Fox’s Prophesy. His racy hunting novels, The Hounds of Heaven and The Black Madonna, combined the twin meanings of the word venery.

Willy Poole was a private person but highly gregarious in familiar company. Journalists loved him as a fellow practitioner and he valued his visits to London to be with them. He was appointed MBE in 2001 for services to journalism and the countryside.

Willy Poole spent the last two years of his life on the Isle of Wight with his wife and their Pomeranian terrier Bella. They survive him with his son Martin.

RWF “Willy” Poole, born December 18 1940, died August 18 2017

 

[Alec Swan]

What else would there be to add? A delightful man.

Thank you Judgemental and may you Rest in Peace R W F Poole MBE.

Alec.

 

[Judgemental]

What else would there be to add? A delightful man.

Thank you Judgemental and may you Rest in Peace R W F Poole MBE.

Alec.

Thank you Alec, I lifted the piece from yesterday's Daily Telegraph, if anybody wants to access the pictures, in which case they will have to 'log on', but it does not give the name of the author.

 

[4x4]

Due to pressure of work and my partner's illness I have not been on here for some time. It was our pleasure to move Willy and Sue to the IoW and to visit several times since. The last time I saw him he was very chipper and always wanted to know how the hunting was in our area. RIP Willy, you were a splendid chap!

 

[cymbeline]

I am saddened that Willie has passed away, he is irreplaceable since they quite simply do not make them like that anymore. R.I.P. Willie, thank you for the many hours of laughter through your writing. I raise my tumbler in your memory, a splendid chap indeed.