The gamekeeper: ‘I’ve lost count of the school plays that I made by the skin of my teeth’

The working day is never really done for those who look after livestock, even at Christmas. Not that it bothers them, of course. As the affable Andrew Holloway — a single-handed gamekeeper at the 1,400-acre Soundborough estate amid the Cotswold hills near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire — explains, the best thing to do is rope your children into helping feed the pheasants on Christmas morning.

‘We open our stockings, then I attach the spinner to the mule and persuade one of my three (Henry, 23, Kate, 20, and Amelia, 17) to come with me,’ he says. ‘As we can’t get away during the shooting season [when estate owners Ian and Elizabeth Wills and their son, James, host 20 days], our families tend to come here and I generally cook — I make my own chestnut stuffing.’

Mr Holloway, 51, has worked here for 20 seasons; he started his career on a Wiltshire game farm and was a beatkeeper at Lilly-combe on Exmoor, then at the Vestey family’s Stowell Park in Gloucestershire. He admits that his commitment to his job puts pressure on his wife, Sue, an animal behaviourist, whom he met when they were students at Sparsholt in Hampshire. ‘I’ve lost count of the school plays that I made by the skin of my teeth,’ he notes with a guilty smile. ‘I don’t get involved enough with present buying, either — I leave it all to Sue.’

Fortunately, however, Sue enjoys beating with her dogs. ‘I and my keepering friends get moaned at because we don’t prepare for Christmas, but all we can think about is whether the last shoot day before [this year, December 23] is going to be OK. Once it’s done, I feel like the king of the castle for 10 minutes, before I start worrying about the next day [often Boxing Day]. Sometimes, when I tell friends and family I’m working, they look at me as if I’m mad. However, that’s the way it is in this job and some of those days are the nicest, as they’re relaxed and so happy.’

That is why countrymen such as Mr Holloway — a farmer’s son from mid Devon, who adores fishing — love their profession: ‘I do it for the smiles on the guns’ faces and the conservation work we do with wild-bird seed mixes, as well as the 20ft field margins, which attract flocks of farmland birds that we feed up to April and through the hungry gap. That gives me a great deal of pleasure.’

Christmas treat ‘Pouring a tumbler of single-malt whisky (preferably Bowmore) — half water, half whisky, as my uncle, also a keeper, taught me when he was working in France — and enjoying it by the fire.’ 

This piece is extracted from an article in Country Life's 2024 Christmas double issue — see what else is inside and order a copy here