The Trip Thursday, 21 August 1997 index day 1 day 2, part 1 day 2, part 2 day 3 day 4 "...it has retained the essential characteristics of hunter and protector..." Major Hawley
Eskdale Farm sign Mr Henry Sommer Mr Sommer's prize winning bull	Eskdale Farm, near Figtree, is today owned by Henry Sommer. The farm was formerly owned by Francis R. Barnes, the man who set the standard of our breed in 1922 and organized the first RR show in Bulawayo. Barnes used the name Eskdale for both his farm and his kennel. Barnes registered his dogs in 1926 and Eskdale Dingo, born in 1915, was among them. Barnes obtained his first "Lion dog" from Graham Stacey, who, in his turn, had them from van Rooyen. Today Henry Sommer "breeds" and "shows" cattles, and I was driven by Henry through Eskdale gate down the path to see his cows and his gorgeous prize winning bull (Zimbabwe Champion). Barnes' house is what I liked most on the trip: it is still a nice, somehow romantic house though rundown, with a verandah all around, a l-shaped smokey kitchen, a small court inside where a nice breeze relieved us from the heath of the afternoon. This is the place where Dingo used to run about, perhaps already with that tipical RR gait we are so fond of today! Thirty years later...I like to compare the pictures of the house with that in Mrs. Murrays's book "The Rhodesian Ridgeback 1924-1974", page 191, showing Mrs. Mylda Arsenis, for many years President of The Parent Club, with Eric Barnes (Francis's son) at Eskdale in 1967. The house very much looks the same thirty years later, though the brick wall has been repainted white and iron rails added to the stairs... the same stairs we climbed up and down on that unforgettable afternoon at Francis Barnes' Eskdale Farm!	Eskdale farm The kitchen The verandah Eskdale stairs A fireplace in the house
Eskdale Farm

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