Emblehope & Burngrange Estate (Northumberland)

“A Centre of Excellence for Working Dogs…This beautiful moorland estate stretches to some 7,550 acres and is ideal for walked up trialling and training for Retrievers, Spaniels and HPRs. The estate offers Pheasant and Partridge shooting and the varied terrain offers opportunities for all breeds of Gundog to demonstrate their natural working abilities.” If that all sounds oddly focussed on dogs, there is a reason – Emblehope shooting estate was taken over by the Kennel Club in 2016 to train gundogs! And “demonstrate their natural working abilities”? An odd phrase considering the years and years of selective breeding that makes a retriever or pointer. Just to reinforce bloodbusinesses’s constant refrain about how ‘normalised’ shooting has become in the UK, global estate agent Knight Frank worked with Hen Harrier brood meddlers Natural England (NE) to sort out an issue that the Kennel Club had to overcome before those ‘natural abilities’ were set loose on the estate – Emblehope is part of the important Keilderhead and Emblehope Moors. a site of special scientific interest (SSSI). Shooting invariably manages to surmount such trivial niggles, and a compliant NE was quoted in 2017 by Knight Frank saying “We have been working closely with the Kennel Club to develop a management plan that would capture the shared vision we both have to make environmental improvements, which could run alongside the commercial business at Emblehope.” The Kennel Club proudly states that its gamekeeper at Emblehope is “a trustee of the Gamekeepers Welfare Trust and an honorary member of the Scottish Gamekeepers Association. He is also a member of the National Gamekeepers Organisation and The British Association for Shooting and Conservation.” Shooting, dogs, gamekeepers, and lots of dead birds…who knew the Kennel Club itself was so embedded within the shooting industry.