History

References to the Bloodhound begin to appear in English writing in the mid 14th century, in contexts which suggest it was well established by then. It is often claimed that its ancestors were brought over from Normandy by William the Conqueror, but there is no actual evidence for this. That the Normans brought hounds from Europe during the post-Conquest period is a virtual certainty, but whether they included the Bloodhound itself, rather than ancestors from which the Bloodhound was subsequently developed, is a matter of dispute which is probably not resolvable on the basis of surviving evidence. In Medieval hunting the typical use of the Bloodhound was as a ‘limer’, or ‘lyam-hound’, that is a dog handled on a leash or ‘lyam’, to find the hart or boar before it was hunted by the pack hounds (raches). It was prized for its ability to hunt the cold scent of an individual animal, and, though it did not usually take part in the kill, it was given a special reward from the carcase.