“Spanning more than 13,000 acres, Garrowby Estate lies to the east of York. The exceptional landscape quality is recognised as having national importance and provides beautiful surroundings in which to live and work…Garrowby is home to the Halifax family…At 13,230 acres, Garrowby Estate is the largest estate in the Halifax Estates group.” The Garrowby/Halifax portfolio includes property, the Garrowby Stud (“founded in 1962 by Lord Halifax and his father”), forestry (“around 10% of Garrowby Estate is woodland”), and almost inevitably the Garrowby Shoot. The Shoot is self-described as being “widely regarded as one of the best high pheasant shoots in the world, with guests returning year after year” – but then which of these outdoor shooting galleries isn’t described like that? Over and over again, the same hyperbole to draw gun-toting clients to the best/stunning/most beautiful/most idyllic/most peaceful etc landscapes said to ‘offer’ the best high-flying pheasants/partridges in the UK…A combination of horses and shooting estates also far too often mean fox hunting, and in November 2024 Calder Valley Hunt Sabs followed the notorious Middleton Hunt “straight toward Garrowby Hall where hounds soon started to speak. Unusually, [huntsman Jason O’Donnel] didn’t seem to want to hang around for too long and then spent most of the day drawing their favourite haunts around Bugthorpe – all part of the vast Garrowby Estate.” The current Lord Halifax, Charles Wood, is the grandson of war-time Foreign Secretary Edward Wood (the 1st Duke) whose nickname was ‘the holy fox’, supposedly referring to his passion for fox hunting and a “Christian moral outlook”- which apparently didn’t extend to the local wildlife…