In the wild and beautiful country around his new ville, William knew that one of the many glories of Leinster were virgin hunting forests teeming with wildlife.

His MacMurrough cousins by marriage would have taken him and Isabel on forays through woodlands and marshes, delighting in demonstrating the skills that needed to be learnt in negotiating Irish terrain.

William's own family, the Marshals, had horses at the core of their existence. They were traditionally responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the King's stables. His father was known as John the Marshal, the official title of that office. Common ground between Gael and Norman would have thus been struck and much camaraderie would grow from discussions on the source of the best hounds, horses and hunting lore.

Indeed, by the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 the Irish had managed to persuade the Normans to abandon the stirrup altogether in favour of a freer unrestricted riding style. Whatever the general advantage of this system, it proved disastrous on the battlefield on that calamitous occasion in county Cork.

In the panel William and Isabel set off. The commonest prey were stags and wild boar, while falcons were used for bringing down pigeons and rabbits. William and his men would have brought their own hounds with them initially. Irish wolf and deer hounds were nevertheless seen as superior in Irish conditions and were also exported in a numbers from the port of Ros.

The upper borders show beaters with their terriers setting off for the day, the shooting of a wild boar, and the carting home of a stag on the back of a sturdy pony.

In the lower border, William inspects work on the new wooden bridge across the river Barrow followed by falcons being trained to remain on their perches, a hare is run into a trapping net by a hound and horsemen trot over the completed bridge of Ros.