THE recent passing of Lady Melissa Brooke has been recognised with obituaries in both the local and sporting press but her main passion in life warranted just a passing mention.

She was a dyed-in-the-wool foxhunter with a life-long connection with the County Limerick Foxhounds. She had spent the war years in New York where their American-born mother had taken the children – Melissa, Caroline (now the Marchioness of Waterford), and Thady (later the Earl of Dunraven) – during hostilities.

Her son, Sir Francis, spoke during the eulogy of ‘a grim determination rather than free abandon’ in Glenbevan on hunting mornings. This was an era of long hunts and even longer days when the family would have prepared themselves for the rigours of staying on terms with hounds over the challenging banks and walls of Co Limerick.

Her daughter Emma recalls hunting as a child. “We fairly had to look after ourselves. When we were about 11 and 13, I had a pony (handed down from Francis) called Mickey Finn, and Francis had a young cob called Charlie. Mummy, up front, would every now and then look to see we were okay.”

Both Lady Melissa and her husband Sir George Brooke came from families steeped in the world of foxhunting. Their marriage in 1959 was a gala occasion with almost 1,000 guests in a glittering reception held in the Dunraven ancestral home, Adare Manor. It was to the same church in Adare she was returned for her funeral service but with just a handful of mourners due to the Covid regulations.

Her husband, George, was already master of the Kildare Foxhounds when they married and they lived in Quinbooke near Celbridge, before moving back to Glenbevin, near Croom in 1963. Sadly, he passed away in 1982.

Together they and their young family, Francis and Emma, would have hunted with the Co Limerick with Lord Daresbury as master and later with Hugh Robards hunting hounds. Lady Melissa joined the Limerick Mastership with Lord Harrington in 1978 and they made a formidable pair at the helm, both from families steeped in generations of hunting. While he stepped down in 1991, Lady Melissa remained on with Charles Barreleit and Hugh Robards until 1997 when she would have hung up her boots.

These were a marvellous 20 seasons when the Co Limerick were looked on as the premier pack in these islands. Melissa was a tireless worker for the hunt often spending the day after hunting on foot, assisting the fencer and seeing farmers along the way. There wasn’t a farmer’s yard in the hunt country that she had not visited and almost always left happy in the knowledge that the hunt would be welcome on their next return visit.

While Lady Melissa had many favoured and famous hunters, those that stood out were the chesnut Tullovin, or the horse I would remember her on, the grey Cooper who was always foot-perfect. She crossed the country well and was never found wanting. While going the pace with hounds in those days was a serious business, she was never too busy to assist a newcomer or offer encouragement to a nervous child on a hairy pony.

Lady Melissa Brooke hunting with the County Limerick Foxhounds \ Catherine Power

Lady Melissa was very involved in the Co Limerick Game Fair which was the premiere event of its kind in Ireland at that time. Limerick Show at the end of August would see her with several entries – both horses and especially her other passion, the horticulture section. The show had been founded by her grandfather, the fifth Earl who had only inherited the title and Adare Manor in his seventies.

After she hung up her boots and ignoring age and infirmity, Lady Melissa became a keen car follower with Seamus Sheahan from Croom driving, right up to the season before last (2018-19). Often one of her nurses, Anne Louise, Patricia or Joan, would be in the back. She never lost her competitive instinct and was delighted to get to the end of a hunt rarely retiring before Fergus Stokes had blown for home. Her favourite charity was the Limerick Samaritans, and she would open her garden annually for them.

Lady Melissa has certainly passed on her hunting gene to her daughter, Emma, who is joint-master of the county pack while her son Francis, a member of The Jockey Club, is chairman of Royal Ascot and recently replaced Johnny Wetherby as Her Majesty’s Representative to the royal meeting.

To Francis and Emma we offer our sympathy, but it is perhaps a couple of lines from The Veteran which might best sum her up in the hunting field

But when the walls stand clear and high and the banks stand big and bear

There’s no one rides so boldly, there’s no one rides so fair

Melissa represented an era that is all but gone, she will be missed.

DP