Celebrating Belvoir Castle's shooting heritage

The Vale of Belvoir, a name derived from the French for ‘beautiful view’, is dominated by the imposing structure of Belvoir Castle. The castle, built by John Manners, the 5th Duke of Rutland, was completed in 1832, and is a Grade I listed building. The castle remains the home of the Manners family to this day. 

 

The 5th Duke was a keen sportsman, and records show that he enjoyed walked-up shooting. on the surrounding estate on almost a daily basis. According to the family archives, there has been a shoot on the estate in some form or another since the 1780s. According to the current Duchess, to whom I chatted on the phone in the time of COVID-19, the castle was built as a very grand hunting lodge, to host house parties that could last for up to a month. In later years Queen Victoria was a guest, so too was Winston Churchill. “Belvoir was really a rather grand sort of ‘party castle’, built for hunting and shooting,” Her Grace told me. Between the late 60s and 2001 the shoot began to offer a few let days, attracting lots of overseas visitors.

The passion for shooting has stayed in the family, and the current Duke and Duchess - the 11th of that ilk - continue a shooting tradition that has been a part of the estate’s heritage for nearly 200 years. For a while they decided to take the shoot back to its roots as a private family affair. “We wanted to honour its heritage and the traditions that surround it,” says Her Grace. “So we shut the castle to the public for a while and concentrated on developing our house, our shoot and our house parties for people who came to stay.”

 

 

The 16,000 acres, in part landscaped by ‘Capability Brown’, are quite varied in terms of topography and land use. The development of the shoot to which the Duchess refers involved the creation of a lot more drives, and introducing partridge to the shoot. “There are a lot of deep valleys,” Her Grace explains, “that are great for partridges.” Phil Burt, the Estate Manager, used his expertise to lay the drives out in a way that made the most of the terrain and Her Grace credits his hard work and dedication for taking the shoot to where it is today - considered to be one of the best in England.

 

 

With more than 75 drives, carefully planned and laid out, there is shooting suitable for guns of all abilities, from novices to high-bird specialists. No two drives are the same, with different locations, scenery, and topography, making each and every drive a new experience. More are added all the time. “The drives are immense,” the Duchess tells me.

 

 

During this redevelopment process it was decided that there was a need for somewhere for people to stay, so Her Grace created “a sort of hunting lodge at Crowson Park,” which was, she tells me, the birthplace of fox hunting in 1750. Today shoot parties can stay here before a day’s shooting at Belvoir. The self-contained lodge sits within the oldest deer park in Europe, and has 8 bedrooms. For guests staying for more than one night there is the chance to fish the nearby lakes. Stays are all-inclusive, and the food - prepared by a private chef, served by a private butler - is sourced as much as possible from the estate’s livestock, and, of course, game from the estate.

Shoot days usually consist of four or five drives, with refreshment breaks during the day and late lunch at the end of the day when shooting finishes. Bags are generally between 200 and 250, with partridge shooting from September and mixed days after the 1st of October. The atmosphere is friendly and relaxed, but run with military precision and attention to detail - even the gunbus is decked out in the estate tweed.

 

Two refreshment stops in the field take place by the lakes at Frog Hollow - part of the 'Capability' Brown landscape - and in a converted barn known as the "Happy Beater", and feature homemade sloe gin among other tasty treats. Lunch is served in the castle's Shoot Dining room. The food is prepared by the family's chef, served by the family butler and is accompanied by good wines chosen by the Duke himself. At the end of the day tea and cake is served.

 

Her Grace enjoying elevenses

 

This meticulous approach applies to staffing the shoot as well. There are four full-time keepers as well as two “YTS lads” (Youth Training Scheme), and a shoot captain, Nick Pacey, whose family have worked for the Dukes for the last 300 years. There’s also “Big John”, now in his late 70s, a former keeper on the estate who still turns out on shoot days to help out. “I’m quite ruthless about people,” says the Duchess, “and I’ve collected my team very carefully.”

 

It is clear from our brief conversation that the love shooting is in the 11th Duchess’s blood just as it was in that of her husband’s forebears, and what more would you expect from a Welsh farmer’s daughter? She talks with great passion not only about driven shooting, but also her fondness for pigeon shooting - it may be the “poor man’s grouse” but it's not beneath this aristocrat nor her sons, who accounted for 150 the day before we spoke. “The way they jink and dive and twist and turn - there’s something so exciting about it, because it's the unknown. I’d love for people to come and shoot pigeons outside the season” she says. I couldn’t agree more.

 

 

She’s also passionate about the consumption of game - you may have seen her discussing her advocacy of pheasant nuggets on Good Morning Britain with Piers Morgan. Most of the game shot on the estate goes to Lincolnshire Game for processing, but a proportion is kept back to be turned into the aforementioned nuggets, sausages and other delicacies, which are not only served to guests but also sold in The Fuel Tank, a restaurant on the estate. “It is so important to honour the life of the birds that you take,” she says. “I love all the tradition and the etiquette of shooting, you know, tipping the keeper, picking up your own birds - we tell our pickers-up to hold back and allow guns to do that if they want to. The etiquette is such an important part of why I love shooting.”

“There’s a real sense of tradition to everything we do here at Belvoir,” Her Grace says. “I’ve been to other commercial shoots at big houses where you’re made to feel like a second class citizen, you know, meeting at the back door, and that kind of thing. Not so at Belvoir, where “you are the ‘King of the Castle’ for the day, and of course we’ll spoil you.” At the start of the day shooting parties are greeted by the Duchess herself and a blazing fire in the castle's Guard Room. She says: “Every single person who puts their hand in their pocket to come and shoot here is made to feel very special. I hope that what makes Belvoir different from other places is that no one is just a number, and I think that’s borne out by the fact that we have people coming back year after year.

 

There are still a few days left for the 2020/21 season, and accommodation is available at Crowson Park shoot lodge or in the castle itself by special arrangement.