'You'll never see the likes of him again'

Rory Knight Bruce pays tribute to Captain Ian Farquhar – master, huntsman, hound man and friend to the countryside

- Rory Knight Bruce

COLOURED pennants fly above white tents at the Duke of Beaufort’s recent point-to-point at Didmarton. Rugged-up horses parade in the brisk March air in a landscape of pastured green fields and small stone walls, unchanged in a century.

At the Knight Frank sponsor’s tent, warming bullshots are being dispensed and the Duke of Beaufort is standing by the painted rails of the saddling enclosure of this immaculately produced course.

But someone is missing.

For 34 years as joint-master, Captain Ian Farquhar was always on hand to welcome friends and strangers alike, to wish them well in their gambles and merriment. Three days before this fixture, he died, aged 78, in the hunting country he made his own – for friendship, sportsmanship and fun.

It was an eerie feeling that pervaded the day. When, before the members’ race, a minute’s silence was called for in his memory, not a dog barked nor a child spoke. It was as if from the lines of Edward Thomas’s Adlestrop:

“And for that minute, a blackbird sang

Close by, and round him, mistier,

Farther and farther, all the birds

Of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire.”

WELL RECOGNISED 

ANYONE who ever met Ian Farquhar will have lasting memories of him. Many have been posted on social media from people whose lives he touched for the better, from mechanics to marquesses, hunt staff to humble homes.