“On Saturday, I went out fox-hunting – seven hours in the saddle. That sort of thing always keeps me in a state of devilish excitement for several days; it’s the greatest physical pleasure I know. I saw only two out of the whole field who were better horsemen than myself, but then they were also better mounted… At least 20 of the chaps fell off or came down, two horses were done for, one fox killed (I was in AT THE DEATH).”
Thus wrote Friedrich Engels to Karl Marx in 1857. The most tantalising thing? That if (big if) it’s true that the teenage Catherine Walters or Skittles rode with the Cheshire Hunt in the late 1850s, as it’s rumoured, she might have ridden alongside Mr Engels.