On 17 February 2005, the Tedworth Hunt, which for generations has pursued its quarry across the hillsides of ancient Wessex and often far on to Salisbury Plain, chased foxes for the last time. Louise Guinness, who has ridden with the Tedworth for 28 years, remembers the day so well. She has a photograph of the milestone moment: grooms, puppy walkers, whippers-in, young masters, veterans of the field, terrier men and stablegirls – a tweedy cross-section of an English rural community dotted with hunting pink.

"We met here at Fosbury [her family home, near Marlborough]," says Guinness of the last day that it was legal to hunt foxes in Britain. "All the hunt supporters came to the meet, maybe three or four hundred of them. Our huntsman at the time was Rodney. He was, man and boy, a wonderful, old-fashioned huntsman: hard drinking, womanising, all that classic stuff.

"Anyway, there were lots of foxes that last day, and, at the end, Rodney 'blew for home'. It's quite a mournful sound even on a normal day, but on that day it sounded really melancholy and, as he blew for home, we were all crying. Even Rodney was crying. His heart was breaking. He just packed up his hounds and went back to the kennels. It felt so sad and we all thought, 'That's it.'" Guinness allows herself a sly smile. "But then, strangely, it wasn't it."

Six years on, with the ban still firmly on the statute book, hunting in England and Wales is flourishing against the odds. In an unintended consequence, New Labour has galvanised rural Britain. In 2011, middle-class men, and especially women, are hunting from November to April, apparently at the dangerous edge of legality, four days a week. And no one – not the police, not the courts, not the saboteurs – is able to do a thing about it. The hunt remains what it always was: the epitome of English independence.

The scarlet coats might be more discreet, and the sound of the horn more muted than in the past, but the nation's hunts are still in full cry and so are its opponents – the "antis" such as the Hunt Saboteurs and the League Against Cruel Sports. Neither side is giving ground, especially here in horse racing-country around Lambourne.

I've joined Guinness to watch a session of "autumn hunting" with the Tedworth, a hard core of dedicated riders and their hounds crisscrossing Salisbury plain in the first light of autumn. Before the ban this was known as "cub hunting", the elimination of the next fox generation after the long summer armistice, and before the hunt season proper gets under way. More rollicking members of the field still refer to it in such terms, and disdain the euphemism of "autumn hunting". After several weeks of getting to know the Tedworth's inner circle, I've come along as a neutral witness to an ancient and notoriously contentious country pursuit reviled by many for its cruelty.

As the hunt slowly crosses the plain towards us, at about 9am, some 40 hounds, in couples, are fossicking through the long grass, while the following "field" moves at an easy trot behind. Any scene less controversial, or barbarous, would be hard to imagine.

It's not difficult to glimpse the allure of a rural tradition that goes back to Merrie England and the greenwood tree. Salisbury Plain offers its own special magic: a pastoral theatre in which to experience a lovely dawn; the flight of rare birds; filigree spiders' webs laced into the hedgerows; immemorial tranquillity, and a lonely blue sky scored with vapour trails, almost the sole reminder of modernity. "When I'm out in the field," says Guinness, "I always get a great sense of privilege at the beauty, and the access to some lovely parts of England. The early mornings can be breathtaking."

The actors on this stage will celebrate this with predictable gusto, but they become vague and evasive when pressed about what, exactly, they've been up to since six o'clock that morning. One says, "It's mainly just about training the young hounds to learn restraint in the field." When you join a hunt like the Tedworth, you cross into an Alice in Wonderland world. In our conversations, no one mentions the fox because, in law, the fox is no longer part of the equation. Theoretically, at least, hunts now follow a trail laid by dragging a scent in advance of the field. It doesn't always turn out like that, though few will speak candidly about what actually happens in the field. "Let's just say," says one, speaking carefully, "that it can be a bit like 40 in a 30 zone".

In hunt society everyone talks about respect for the law and upholding community traditions, while carrying on like red-blooded Englishmen and women hellbent on having the time of their lives. Part of this is natural exuberance; part of it an instinctive defiance towards inexorable change, the defence of a way of life and a bloody-minded refusal to yield any advantage to the League Against Cruel Sports and the Hunt Saboteurs.

Country pursuits are in fashion. Tatler, the house journal of the shire-ocracy, has recently published a hunting, shooting and fishing supplement.

Kate Reardon, the new editor, a keen horsewoman, describes herself as "an enthusiastic amateur", though she's reluctant to be seen as a poster-child for foxhunting. "What I love about the rural community," she tells me, "is that it's a well-glued society of mutually supportive people. But it's a completely different value system from the world of the cities: the media, which is based in urban centres like London and Manchester, simply doesn't get it. In the countryside there's another way of life."

Sometimes it's not obvious where the fun lies. Sarah Crean, one of four "joint masters" of the Tedworth, says that, on a cold, hard December day, "hunting can be a test of endurance". Louise Guinness, who promotes the Tedworth as a model of responsible hunting, refuses to glamorise her pastime, stressing the dedication of all concerned, huntspersons and foot followers alike. She describes a mixture of being "very bored, very cold and very, very terrified".

"Much of what we do is very hardcore. At the beginning of the season we are usually getting up in the dark to go hunting. Once the winter proper comes you can be out in the field, freezing cold, utterly exhausted and wondering, 'Why am I doing this?' I suppose there's a certain pride in staying the course." But she admits that some aspects of countryside culture are not to her taste. "The Hunt Ball, for instance, is unbelievably awful. People behave so incredibly badly. They fight. They get drunk. They chase women. It can get quite rough."

Is it like a Jilly Cooper novel ? "No, it's much, much worse than Jilly Cooper."

This element of the hunt has its own followers. Lizzie Squires, a frisky account executive with a Soho advertising agency, who prefers to speak under an assumed name, says that she started hunting after the ban, which was part of the motivation. "I love the frisson of living on the edge," says Squires. "The physical fear is fascinating. Let's face it, in everyday life you're never frightened. Yet, when I drive down the M3 on Friday evening (Squires hunts on Saturdays with the Portman) I have to face the possibility that by the end of the weekend I might be dead or in a coma."

It is a commonplace of rural A&E departments that the bravest, toughest casualties wheeled through their doors are hunting women. Fearless female equestrians make up the majority of the field. Squires, who tries to analyse this, says, "Women have this weird thing about horses. I can't explain it, but it's incredibly powerful. My horse is strong, silent and dependable. We understand each other, and we take risks together. I'd put my horse above any man."

Rural or metropolitan, take your pick: hunting defies all attempts to crush it. The act that enforced the hunting ban ate up hundreds of hours of parliamentary time. In its day, this was supposed to be a piece of landmark legislation in the modernising of Britain. No more unspeakables in pursuit of the uneatable. An end to the mindless, cruel slaughter of the fox. A wake-up call to the countryside. The death knell for the John Peel of ancient ballad, hurtling over hedges and ditches "in his coat so gay".

And yet, England's nearly 200 hunts, from the incredibly posh Beaufort to the rough-and-ready Llangeinor, where Ford factory workers will choose the night shift so they can hunt in the daytime, survive as the lynchpin of a country way of life. In Wiltshire alone, the Tedworth competes with no fewer than 10 other hunts from the nearby Vine and Craven to the RA (Royal Artillery), improbably enough, a hunt maintained by the army, riding out dressed in forest green.

The Tedworth's huntsman, Oliver Harding, lives next to his hounds in a tied cottage with his girlfriend Rachael. He's in his 20s, a serious-minded countryman from agriculture college. To listen to him is to begin to understand why the Countryside Alliance persists and why this community has proved so hard to change. Harding describes something that is more a way of life than a job. "On a hunting day [the Tedworth hunts on Tuesdays and Saturdays] I'll be out in the field from eight to eight. The day before I'll walk the country, to talk to all the farmers and their gamekeepers. And then the day after I'll be looking after the hounds." As master of ceremonies it's Harding's job to provide a good day out. "The field (the riders) is there for the entertainment," he says. "What happens on the day itself is an accident. Once the hounds have picked up a scent it's not easy to stop them. It's up to me to make sure they pick up a good scent. I'm the one the field will follow."

The biggest threat to the Tedworth is not from the antis, who dog the steps of the each hunt with video cameras and obstructive diversions. The real challenge to the contemporary hunt is – once again – the government, and the declining rural economy. The recession bites as hard as the ban. The Tedworth is a middle-range hunt, but it's hard up and it costs between £65,000 and £80,000 to maintain per annum. Privately, its masters admit this is a struggle and agree that occasionally they discuss the possibility of mergers with neighbouring hunts.

On 18 June this year, as part of a long process of familiarisation, the Observer went to the Tedworth Hunt's Puppy Show at its kennels near Hungerford. Apart from the newly mown field with Chelsea tractors parked in shiny rows it is a scene that could have been enacted in 1911, indeed in almost any year before the end of the Great War. The puppy show is an essential part of a matrix of fundraising activities including quiz nights, charity auctions, balls, whist drives, garden fetes and raffles.

Here, the battered bowler hat, the long cream riding coat and the highly polished boot mingle on equal terms with the regimental tie, the checked shirt and the cavalry twill. Some of the men wear Panama hats and carry gaudy golf umbrellas. Their women scurry about in shapeless floral dresses or – for younger models – achingly tight jeans and tiny little court shoes with gold buckles. You see sun-scorched faces the colour of ripe corn and the kind of eyebrows that went out with the Charge of the Light Brigade. Whatever they privately think or feel, everyone – man, woman and child – is unfailingly polite and friendly, eager to please, anxious to present the face of normality.

The kennels have been scrubbed and watered down to the last brick. The atmosphere is heavy with the smell of carbolic, paint and disinfectant. The conversation skitters over horses, dogs, schools, kids, holidays and, inevitably, the delightful gossip of who's sleeping with whom. There's a scattering of nobs, and somewhere among the dog-lovers we spot Elinor Goodman, former political editor of Channel 4. Despite the money on display here, there's not much to spare. The rural working class has grown accustomed to living on a shoestring.

Ted Burton, Harding's predecessor as huntsman, lives in retirement with his wife Dot, a few miles down the road outside Pewsey. Burton has the majesty of a retired general and the serenity of a man at peace with his environment, shaped by foxhunting. He recalls his huntsman career as "a wonderful life, and a wonderful experience". His wife interjects to complain that, "It's probably not as good now as it used to be. There's much more regulation, and health and safety has made some of the old ways too expensive."

To one side, in a huddle, there's a knot of weather-worn men with gnarled walking sticks, crammed into tweed suits and shiny boots. These are the terrier men – not the apex of the hunting society, but part of its complex pyramid.

Lizzie Squires observes that "the ban has had the paradoxical effect of making the huntsmen and their followers into rural freedom fighters. Country teens who used to express their disaffection by being anti have swung round behind the hunt precisely because they see it as a way to flout the law."

Foxhunting attracts thrill seekers and risk junkies. Squires, who can't resist the adrenalin rush, says, "Sometimes you'll go out and you can't pass a trailer for people fucking. Sex is so easy on the hunt. It's easy to get lost. I've been set up on dates while I was actually out in the field. You're close to death and perhaps a little bit drunk – I neck half a bottle of sloe gin every time I go out – so sex comes easily. Plus, it's incredibly glamorous. Almost any man, in hunting clothes, looks good on a horse."

Another rider, from a different hunt, goes further: "When you're out in the field the blood is up. On one occasion I challenged this rider, 'I'll fuck you if you jump that hedge.' Needless to say, he fell off and got covered in mud, but I fucked him anyway.'"

Here, at the puppy show, any undercurrent of eroticism is not obvious, nor does anyone seem terribly exercised by the legality of their pursuit. The mantra of any hunter's conversation is always that "it is our intention to hunt within the law…"

Country people, who still hope for the repeal of the ban, will say that New Labour never understood them. Sarah Crean remembers the Countryside Alliance rallies as a turning point in her coming of age as a rural freedom fighter. "I think I went to every march, and I took my children, too." Crean is an interesting example of a contemporary huntswoman. She grew up in Southsea, far from the fields of Wessex. Hunting is a late passion and she admits it costs her several thousand pounds a year. "Yes," she concedes, "it can become quite obsessive."

For the antis, also known to the hunt as "the sabs" or "the stupids", it's also an obsession: a lifelong battle against cruelty to animals – especially the fox. The Tedworth's chief anti is a veteran hunt saboteur named Aubrey Burge. He's unwilling to discuss his position, but the League Against Cruel Sports, which fears a repeal of the law, says it is working "tirelessly" to keep up the pressure on MPs. One frustration is the indifference of the police. An ex-chief constable in Yorkshire said, publicly, that he considered infringements of the hunting ban as less deserving of police notice than letting off fireworks in a built-up area.

Rita McVittie, a former special constable, now a semi-retired book keeper, has an unusual angle on the law. Like several police personnel across the country, she was for more than 30 years an enthusiastic huntswoman, and still rides with the Tedworth. For her "the thrill of hunting is being out in the open air, on a horse, and being allowed to ride in country I wouldn't normally be allowed to ride in".

McVittie believes the Tedworth avoided the worst of the controversy around the ban by keeping a low profile. "We were never targeted in a big way. There is one thing to be said for Aubrey Burge: you know where you are with him. It was all a bit of a game on both sides. The police recognise that. No one ever said to me, 'The sabs are here, what are you going to do about it ?'"

Like First World War battalions, both sides have become acclimatised to the stalemate of entrenched positions.

"After the ban, we soon realised," says McVittie, "that we could produce something that was totally legal, and had much more resemblance to what we'd had before than we ever expected." She, like all hunting people, hopes the law will be repealed, but recognises that there are probably not the votes. Besides, next to bigger threats such as recession and national planning, riding to hounds is no longer quite the issue it was under New Labour.

The rural community has had to come to terms with a Tory-led coalition that's not, after all, the countryside's friend. Despite a 2010 election manifesto that boasted plans "to promote green spaces and wildlife corridors", the traditional champions of the countryside have drafted a national planning policy which has begun to mobilise much of the anti-government hostility of 1999. Today, lessons learned by the Countryside Alliance are being used against Tory MPs in rural seats.

Governments come and go. Here, deep in Wessex, the ways of the land seem immutable. For Louise Guinness and her fellow Tedworth hunters, something that was threatened has survived to be cherished, like family. When she describes her hunter, Basil, it's as if she's talking about a blood relative. "He's already 16," she says, "and he was 11 when I bought him [for £5,000 from a dealer in Connemara]. I'm already worrying about him ageing."

It's probably hard for the town- and city- dwelling civilian (about 80% of the UK) to grasp such emotions. And foxhunting remains an issue that defeats everyone: neither side of the debate can find common ground, let alone move towards any hint of a rapprochement.

The steady erosion of the English countryside does not, apparently, accelerate the decline of the hunt but instead makes it, symbolically, more vivid than ever. Looking into the future, it's not hard to imagine the sound of horses' hooves echoing across concrete fields and the horn echoing between canyons of suburban sprawl. Meanwhile, the fox itself dodges through the metropolis, rioting in the hencoop, as apt a symbol of Old England – wily, feral and indestructible – as the men and women who still chase after him.