Captain Ronnie Wallace

The legendary huntsman forged a formidable reputation with the Heythrop and led from the front with the Masters of Foxhounds Association

- By Sir Johnny Scott

AMONG the gravestones in St Luke's churchyard in the small village of Simonsbath, high on Exmoor, is one with a unique inscription dedicated to Captain RE Wallace MFH, who died in 2002. It lists all the different hound packs he had hunted in a career lasting 66 years and his appointment as chairman and then president of the Masters of Foxhounds Association (MFHA) between 1970 and 2002. Wallace was a genius in the art of venery, revered for his knowledge of hound breeding and his achievements as a Master of Foxhounds during the second half of the 20th century, which are still the stuff of legend.

Ronald Eden Wallace, always known as Ronnie, was born in 1919 at Rotherfield in the Weald of East Sussex. He started hunting with the Eridge in Kent, where his father was hunt secretary, and an early mentor was the renowned Eridge huntsman Will Freeman. Summer holidays were spent hunting on Exmoor, where he was captivated by the wild beauty of the open moorland and a place to which he would return many times before settling there for his last quarter-century as an MFH.

In 1935, the family moved to Gloucestershire where he hunted with the Cotswold and the following year, at the age of 16, Wallace became Master of the Eton Beagles. There he earned a formidable reputation for organisation and the single-minded pursuit of excellence, which was to become the hallmark of his later hunting career. In his last Season (1938) the pack hunted 104 days, accounting for 75 brace of hares and three foxes – a record that was never matched.