Most of us are familiar with the word Decoy referring to a wooden, or plastic model of a duck or pigeon, but in this case the word Decoy refers to a system of nets used to trap birds. The etymology of the word “decoy” gives a strong indication of where the word originated as it is derived from the Dutch word “de kooi” or “koye” meaning cage. The use of this word in England has been traced back at least as far as the reign of James I (1603-25). The use of ponds with nets developed into both a skill and art form that in the early 1980’s was to capture my imagination.
In the early 1980’s I attended a talk or lecture at Spalding Photographic Society given by Tony Cook and illustrated with photographic slides taken by his wife Anne Treadwell- Cook. Tony was a warden of the Wildfowl Trust’s Peakirk site where he lived. He was also responsible for running a decoy nearby at Newborough, one of the last surviving and most perfect decoys in the country. As a teenager I was fascinated how a dog could be made to jump over hurdles and attract ducks into a curved net, not for eating as in the past, but for ringing. My interest was aroused and I started to look out for farms with the name “Decoy” in them and living in Spalding I could find quite a few with Mr Riddington’s farm on the A1073 to Peterborough being one of the more obvious ones. Riding on my bike, going out to calls with my father, and pouring over maps, I found many more. But I could find very little sign of Decoys other than the name. This changed in 1985 when as a young member of Spalding Gentlemen’s Society I came across a fabulous book, “The Book of Duck Decoys Their Construction, Management and History” by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey in 1886. This book had been written at the time because the author realised that due to drainage of the Fens and changes in agriculture the Decoy was fast disappearing and he wrote this book to capture the art before it disappeared. In doing so he effectively catalogued all of Britain’s decoys, or recently disappeared decoys as at that date. So as soon as I had my own car I traipsed around the highways and byways of Lincolnshire and some of the neighbouring counties trying to track down these sites. A few years later, at some considerable expense, I bought my own copy of this book, nowadays it is freely available online in pdf format able to be read on your computer screen or tablet.
The value of this record is illustrated by his list of decoys in use in Lincolnshire being one, at Ashby near Scunthorpe compared to those no longer in use being 38. Even in 1886 they were disappearing fast. In 1918 Mr J Whitaker F.Z.S. replicated this feat with a similar book “British Duck Decoys of Today 1918” Like his predecessor he was aware of the dying are of the Decoy noting that Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey identified 47 working decoys across the whole of Britain in 1886 and in 1918 the total count of worked decoys was 28, today I could only count four in working order and even then I am not confident of their condition. We are extremely lucky that one of the most perfect decoys in Britain has been preserved as a national heritage site at Newborough not far from Crowland and Peterborough. Spalding, Crowland and Friskney were key areas for the establishment of decoys and I have no doubt that they provided good incomes on the wetter lands of yesterday before wind and steam drained the area.
I will reproduce some of the 1886 book, as the leading source on this subject references to it cannot be avoided, but I will try and use many other references using Sir Ralph’s list of decoys as a starting point. Aged 19 I travelled around much of Lincolnshire and beyond identifying and photographing the sites, or what I thought was the site, of old decoys. Once I had put together a suitable file I duplicated it and, at a Mr John Redshaw’s suggestion, left a copy in Spalding Gentlemen’s Society for people to refer to inviting them to add to the file. No doubt this is still there somewhere. This was before computers were affordable to the common populace and the internet was for the future to discover.
The earliest form of Decoys are totally different in both description and use to that described by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey. The use of nets was most profitable when being used to drive flightless fowl in moult into nets. Evidence of such practise has been found in the marshes of Iran and Egypt and later in Europe from the 12th century onwards, especially Holland and England. It is almost without doubt that the capture of fowl provided income to the monastic institutions of the Fens such as Crowland Abbey and Spalding Priory. William Camden’s “Britannia” published in 1586 described netting in the post reformation period:
“Crowland lies among the deepest fens and waters stagnating off muddy lands, so shut in and envirronn’d as to be inaccessible on all sides, except the north and east, and that by narrow causeys. In situation we may compare small things with the great, it is not unlike that of Venice, consisting of three streets, divided by canals of water, planted with willows, and built on piles driven into the bottom of the fen, and joined by a triangular bridge of admiral workmanship., under which, the inhabitants report, is a pit of immense depth dug to receive the confluence of waters. Beyond this bridge, where the soil cements to solid ground, anciently stood the monastery – all round which, except where the town stands, it is so moory that you can run a pole into the ground of thirty feet; and nothing is to be seen one very side but beds of rushes, and near the church, a grove of alders. It is not withstanding, full of inhabitants, who keep their cattle at a good distance from the town, and go to milk them in little boats (called skerries) which will hold but two persons. But their chief profit arises from the capturing of fish and wild fowle, which they do in such quantities that in the month of August they drive 3000 ducks into one net, and call their pools their fields – no corn grows within five miles of them. On account of this fishery and catching of fowls they paid formerly to the abbot and now to the King 300£ sterling a year.”
Descriptions of a Decoy:
Put very simply a decoy is a pond surrounded by woodland which has one or more tapering curved channels running off it called pipes. These pipes are covered with nets with rush or wood screens running alongside the base of the nets. Ducks are encouraged to the pond by a combination of feeding and lack of disturbance and the use of reared live ducks to lure others in. Ducks are then lured into the netted pipes by both the tame live ducks and a decoy dog attracting their attention by jumping between screens until they are driven into the ever narrowing nets to be captured.
However, the decoy pipe is not always cut off a pond and were sometimes built running off a mere, a marsh, a river or even a coastal estuary. In Britain and Ireland the decoy pond was the most common form that they took.
The above drawing of a decoy man using a dog is exactly how the late Tony Cook demonstrated his dog being used when I visited Borough Fen Decoy. He explained that often the dog was chosen with reddy-brown fox colours, as was his dog. I didn’t ask the breed, but my guess it was a collie cross, and it was about the same size as a large fox. He explained that the dog would jump between the hurdles using silent commands from himself. It could also double back and jump from behind the ducks using the screens as cover to run back. This was also demonstrated in the old Anglia TV Survival film “The Piper of Nacton” which at the time of writing can still be found on You Tube. I first viewed this film when I visited the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge and got talking to one of the curators there who gave me a private screening of this film in their educational cinema in 1992.
Tony explained to me that other colours and types of dog could be used and that in the past Billy Williams had even tried using a cat, albeit with limited success due to the cats disobedience. He had also used a stuffed fox and a stuffed stoat presenting by hand at the different hurdles.
However, I wondered why the ducks would follow such animals that were potential predators of the fowl. Tony Cook told me it was because they were curious. However, in 1994 I was chatting to wildlife artist Bruce Pearson at the Wildfowling conference about this and he explained that it was because ducks naturally mob potential land predators and it is this mobbing behaviour that sees them chase after a dog up the decoy pipe.
The Victorian sportsman H C Folkard penned the following rhyme:
“How silly the wild-duck and widgeon appear,
To be lured in decoy by the pranks of an ape!
But, crafty the pochard, which cunningly dives,
And beats under water a certain escape.”
Certainly the decoy man’s dog was highly regarded and at Newborough and other decoy sites I have visited I have found the gravestones of the various “Pipers”.
There are many old accounts of decoys in use, some are clearly written by people that had never seen a decoy in action. One of the best accounts I have found of a decoy dog being worked, or “dogging” (sadly a word that has changed its meaning in modern times) is by J. M. Heathcote in his 1876 book “Reminiscences of Fen and Mere” where he recalls a visit to Whittlesey Decoy on the edge of the Mere. The site of this decoy is now identified by a series of fishing lakes called Decoy Fishing Lakes on the edge of Whittlesey. I was once told by the farmer that owned the lakes that he took down the last of the iron hoops in the 1990’s.
“A visit to the Decoy was a favourite pastime for our friends. We made our way to Mr. Skelton who lived in a lonely farm house, at a short distance from the Decoy. We were often told, ‘The wind is not right. You cannot see the covey today.’ But in the event of our having permission he gave us a piece of lighted turf, with instructions to breathe upon it; otherwise the ducks would be aware of our approach. We were then conducted in a mysterious way so that we should enter the enclosure upwind. Strict silence was enjoined. The Decoy itself included a space of several acres, dedicated to the purpose and left to run into a wilderness of alders, sedge and reed. In the centre was a pond, in which swam tame ducks, trained from their egg-shell to deceive their species. Several ditches or pipes were cut with a slight curve issuing from a large pond, about three or four yards wide at the entrance, and thirty to fifty yards long. This terminated in a hoop -net, like the purse of a drag-net, and at its termination was about two feet wide. Across the pipe, poles, being driven into the ground, were bent towards each other and netted over, decreasing in height from the entrance to the end of the pipe. A series of reed screens on one side of the pipe were placed at such an angle that the ducks could not see the walkers. In each of the screens a little dog hole was left about a foot from the ground, through which the dog was trained to jump, show himself, and return to his master, who gave him a piece of cheese. The wild duck is an inquisitive bird, and his instinct directs him to swim towards the spot where the dog shows himself. The dog repeats the exhibition of himself at each remaining screen, and the ducks in like manner follow him. The dog was then ordered to lie still, while Skelton showed himself at the end of the pipe next to the pond. The birds flew forward into the purse-net, which was removed with such birds as were caught. The time of catching was by law from June 1st to October 1st. Teal and wigeon were taken between October and March.
Frank Coles, now occupying a farm in Holme Fen, has told me that Skelton, who established his decoy about the year 1815, stated to him that for the first three or four years the decoy was drowned, and he caught no ducks. In the following year he took two hundred dozen in seven days. The price of ducks in Leadenhall Market was usually eight shillings a couple.”
The maths of this means 2400 ducks in seven days were potentially worth £480. In this account I note the requirement to hide human scent from the ducks. I have no doubt that wildfowl have a very good sense of smell and have had this demonstrated to me by Tony Creasey whilst on a bird count on the Wash as he caused a flock of geese to divert at some distance by simply opening his flask of Bovril. The purse net described is a net secured at the end of the tunnel which once the ducks have been herded into it can be picked up and with one twist of the end the ducks are held secure for retrieval. The beauty of the decoy is that birds are recovered fresh without injury from lead shot that has can be the curse of many a diner.
The disappearance of the Decoy from Lincolnshire and the neighbouring counties now means it only exists in remains, whether that be residual woods and spinneys, patterns of decoys that can only be seen from the air, names of old farms, houses, ponds and bridges or the words and pictures in old books. Thankfully Borough Fen Decoy at Newborough is preserved as an English Heritage site. But such sites require work and maintenance.
It is without doubt that the habitat that Decoys provide is of great benefit to the environment. As the Fens were drained and more land fell under the plough the Decoys, or their remains in the form of wooded ponds provided oasis for wildlife in a disappearing landscape. When I visited Borough Fen Decoy it was being used to study wildlife with ducks and smaller birds being caught and ringed and insect traps inspected. The list of birds, butterflies, moths, insects was substantial, as was the list of flora and trees. As a place to enable study and an oasis in a cultivated countryside the benefit was undoubted.
However, the environmental sustainability of a working decoy to supply food in an increasingly drained and cultivated countryside of the post World War 2 era is doubtful. This was not necessarily an issue in Britain because decoys had largely disappeared by the end of the 19th century. But in Holland, where they were of great commercial value exporting wildfowl and waders for consumption throughout Europe they came under great scrutiny and despite there being recognised as oasis for wildlife in a changing environment they were regulated out of existence for fear that they had too large an impact on the population of wildfowl. The Dutch decoys were at a far larger commercial scale than in Britain and were far more numerous:
Number of working decoys in the Netherlands:
1838 – 220
1888 – 170
1931 – 145
1946 – 121
1948 – 120
The greatest decline of the decoys happened in the regions of the big rivers of the Rhine, Waal and Maas. By 1948 this decline was largely accounted for by the canalization and regulation of rivers together with highly efficient electric pumps resulting in the periodic flooding in spring and autumn becoming a thing of the past. However, some decoys benefitted from this and increased their take, for example in the Ijsselmeer (the former Zuiderzee) the substitution of brackish water for fresh water saw an increase in wildfowl from the 1930’s onwards.[i]
Like those in the Lincolnshire and neighbouring Fens the Dutch decoys enjoyed relative isolation and lack of disturbance which was protected by various laws that prevented shooting near a decoy, or at least night shooting near a decoy. The take from Dutch decoys was not a figure shared freely as the opposition from conservationists grew, but certainly in 1948 a considered estimate of 300,000 birds per annum from the 120 decoys remaining was accepted as reasonable and was evidenced in part by the export market.
The success of Dutch decoys was possibly a limiting factor. Certainly the price of wildfowl sold at Leadenhall market was depressed by the influx of large numbers from Holland. However, the blockade of Britain by Napoleon interrupted this supply from across the North Sea resulting in an uplift in the price of wildfowl that made the few remaining decoys of that era more commercially viable.
In 1948, the days of the commercial decoy in Holland were numbered and they were destined to decline like their British counterparts with the Netherlands section of the International Committee for Bird Preservation having the following standpoint:
“The Netherlands Section is of the opinion that decoys are not merely destructive but also have a protective function.
The so-called summer decoys specializing on the catch of native Mallards, offer at the same time much protection to these birds, which find here quiet breeding-places. These decoys yield a great part of their own catch, whereas after the summer catch (August-October) they provide a safe daylight habitat for the majority of the native Mallard stock. The decoy woods are also refuges for the wild flora and fauna, and some can be classed as potential nature reserves. The maintenance of these refuges and their rights of delimitation in a densely populated country like Holland, has proved to depend wholly on the activity of the decoy man who is financially interested in a profitable catch. The cost of maintenance and supervision are then paid out of the proceeds of the capture of native mallards.
In addition to the summer decoys for the catch of native mallards, there are decoys which specialize in migratory mallards and other migratory duck (“Blauwgoed”). Several of these decoys have excessive catches, and it is thought that some 25 must be classed as really destructive. In most cases it is due to the favourable situation, whereas in fewer decoys it is the result of the exceptional ability of the decoyman.
In conclusion the Netherlands Section is of the opinion that the Netherlands Government should take further steps to regulate the decoy trade and, in particular, restrict the excessive catches.
The following measures are recommended:
A. The decoys should be closed not later than the 15th of January, and opened not before the 1st of August.
B. The decoys should be closed in times of frost.
C. In the closed season the pipes should be sealed.
D. No tame ducks except mallards should be used.
E. The creation of new decoys should be prohibited.
F. The creation of waterfowl refuges should be promoted, particularly in the neighbourhood of destructive decoys.
G. Decoys no more in use should be kept as wildfowl refuges; their right of delimitation should be maintained.”
Thus the fate of decoys was sealed in Holland, the last bastion of the art. Note “right of delimitation” is the right to be free from disturbance in the surrounding area, typically by shooting.
Lincolnshire Decoys
Crowland is possibly the site of one of the first decoys in the country and was evidenced as being there in the reign of Henry VI and possibly sooner. In 1432 an organised mob armed with sticks and swords attacked the decoy giving rise to litigation on the part of the Abbot of Crowland Monastery, to whom the decoy belonged, with a view to protection of his rights. Although his rights were established the mob had stolen as many as 600 fowl and the decoy suffered for some time afterwards from such a disturbance.
The site of this decoy is thought to have been where an ancient post mill stood along Postland Road, Crowland. This mill was thought to have been built in the 1790’s and was owned by the Rector of Crowland in 1911 when sadly it fell foul of an arson attack and was burnt down. My personal opinion is that there were several decoys owned by the Abbey in the area between Crowland and Cloot Drove/Brotherhouse Bar where Guthlacs cross denotes the boundary between Crowland Abbey and Spalding Priory controlled land. Indeed it would not take too much imagination to envisage a decoy pipe in the fishing pit that runs alongside Cloot drove. It is a slight diversion to mention the derivation of Cloot Drove as a name. A Cloot was an ancient means of reversing water flow thought to be of Arabic origin by a system of drains and slackers, I guess this would be between Crowland and Cowbit washes as required. I have no full understanding how the Cloot would work and have yet to come across a detailed description.
Cowbit Decoys – like Crowland it is reasonable to assume that there were several Decoys in the Cowbit area and this is held out by the recollections of an 88 year old Henry Pickering of Cowbit when he was interviewed in 1906:
“Altogether there would be at one time within Mr Pickering’s recollection about a dozen or more decoys in various parts of Cowbit Wash. Two brothers named Ransome, who had what was known as Fleet lots, were very successful both as shots and with decoys, and were said to have paid in one year £200 in carriage alone on catches sent up to London market. Nearly all the stuff went direct to the Metropolis, where prices were better than in Spalding. The value of birds depended a food deal on the fluctuations of the market, but wild ducks averaged about 4/- a couple. Green plovers would fetch 9d to 1/- each.”
The Cowbit Decoy was identified as being about a mile north of Cowbit by Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey and this does tie in with the location of Mill Drove between Cowbit and Spalding. It is hard to envisage as you look across flat farmland that this was an area of trees and ponds.
What I do find a little easier to imagine are the decoys of Bourne and Deeping Fen. I have been told that in the late 1880’s you could still see the remnants of wood and ponds as you passed Counter Drain and Twenty Stations on the train to Bourne. The decoys are clearly defined on this map:
COY BRIDGE – crossing the South Holland Main Drain south of Holbeach St. Johns this bridge marks the edge of the site of Fleet Decoy.
The naming of this bridge is apt because the Decoy was destroyed by the cutting of the South Holland Drain in 1793.
1884 sale particulars of farmland in the area being sold by auction at The Chequers Hotel in Holbeach refers to the land being in the area of “The Old Decoy”. Fenland Notes and Queries of 1886 states: “The bridge in question is in Fleet Fen (Fleet being a very long thin parish) and is named after a nearby duck decoy, once owned by Sir Joseph Banks. Although this is a fen that was enclosed in the Middle Ages the decoy is probably only of 17th century date.”
I found the following notification:
"FLEET DECOY
Whereas the tenant of Fleet Decoy has suffered considerable damage from inconsiderate persons, who, by firing Guns near the said Decoy, have raised the Fowl and driven them from the Decoy Pond to distant paces, from whence the larger part did never return: this is to give notice, that in case any person in future shall raise the Fowl from the said Decoy by firing a gun in its immediate neighbourhood, they will be dealt with according to law, for redress of the damage they have occasioned.
By order of the Right Honorable Sir Joseph Banks Bart and K.B. Spalding 1st September 1812. "
[i] The International Committee for Bird Preservation Netherlands Section summer 1948
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