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THE DOMESDAY BOOK OF DOGS

Fell Terrier

   The Fell Terrier is not required to bolt a fox from it's earth and thus afford a good run for the hounds waiting above ground, for the fox in the Lake District is regarded as vermin rather than sport and the terrier is expected to kill the fox.  For this reason the Fell Terrier is 'dead game' and of little use for actually bolting foxes.  

   Jack Russells are occasionally outcrossed to smaller specimens of the breed, and it's not unknown for white-bodied sports to crop up from time to time in Fell terrier litters, and these are introduced into Jack Russell strains.

  The breed is very varied and over the centuries has received infusions of blood from a host of other breeds: the Old English Rough-Coated Black and Tan Terrier; the Border Terrier; the Bedlington Terrier, the Irish Terrier, the Sealyham and the Welsh Terrier to name the main sources.

Fell showing signs of Patterdale and Lakeland blood.

Cyril Breay with Skiffle.  Photo courtesy of COCH-Y-BONDDU  BOOKS, taken from The Fell Terrier by D. Brian Plummer, 1983.

   Cyril Breay (above) and Frank Buck are attributed with developing that particular strain of Fell terrier known as the Patterdale terrier.  The Patterdale terrier and the Lakeland terrier are perhaps more refined in type than the Fell terrier in general but they are no less game.  To 'improve' type in the Lakeland terrier for it's acceptance into the ranks of the kennel club it is generally assumed that there was significant outcrossing with the Irish Terrier.

From Foxes, Foxhounds and Fox-hunting.  1922.  Page 219.

    Until the 1980s many breed books used Patterdale as a synonym for Lakeland terrier, as in the above example from Richard Clapham; yet the quite distinctive breed-type known as the Patterdale amongst terrier men was already a few decades old by this time.  The author also remarks that Joe Bowman of the Ullswater Hunt "always has a few couple of real good working terriers, 'hard bitten' customers which he can rely on to bolt a fox, or make an end of him underground if he refuses to face the open.  These terriers of the 'Patterdale breed' have a good deal of Bedlington blood in them, and weigh from 14lb to 16lb.  Joe likes them a bit, 'on the leg' so that they can surmount the ledges underground, and thus reach their fox without getting unduly punished; and at the same time they can travel over any sort of rough ground without tiring during the course of a long run."

Dogs in Britain, C. L. B. Hubbard, 1948
Macmillan and Co., London

The Sporting Terrier, D. Brian Plummer, 1981
COCH-Y-BONDDU BOOKS

Foxes, Foxhounds and Fox-hunting, Richard Clapham
Heath Cranton Limited, London. 1922.

The Working Terrier, D. Brian Plummer, 1978
The Boydell Press, Ipswich.

The Hunter's Year Book 1981
Huddlesford Publications

The Hunter's Yearbook 1982
Huddlesford Publications

SEE Proto-terriers

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