Page 139 HISTORY OF DECOYS.

HISTORY OF DECOYS.


Acle, 11 miles E. from Norwich, on the property of Lord Calthorpe at Acle.-A Decoy was worked here nearly fifty years ago by a man named Johnson. It is said to have had three pipes, traces of which are still visible, though much overgrown. Mautby, 2½miles W. of East Caistor, between West Caistor and Runham.-It is uncertain when this Decoy ceased to be worked. Mr. Fellowes of Shotesham Park, the owner of it, possesses a letter written by George Skelton, dated Winterton, March 1833, offering to hire it, from which letter it appears that at that date it was out of repair. The offer, however, was declined, Mr. Fellowes preferring the shooting, and the Decoy has never been worked since. The pond is still the resort of large numbers of wildfowl, and the place is kept perfectly quiet, the pipes and the posts of the screens remaining. It was a very perfect Decoy in its day, of small size, with 4 pipes, and was especially successful in luring the fowl off Breydon Water, where in those days they abounded. Its position is 1½ miles on the north bank of the River Bure, to the right of a line drawn from Thrigby to Runham, on the sea-coast. Besthorpe.-On what is still known as the Decoy Common, in the, parish of Besthorpe, 1¼ mile from Attleborough, there was formerly a Decoy, which is believed to have been abandoned about the time of the enclosure of the common in 1815. An old man, eighty-five years of age, who had resided in the neighbourhood all his life, stated in 1878 to a correspondent of Mr. Southwell's, that the common was formerly usually under water, and that the ducks used to resort to it up to the date of its enclosure. He could give no information, however, as to the working of the Decoy. Narford Hall.-The Rev. J. Fountaine, previous to his constructing the Decoy at South Acre, made two pipes on the large lake in 1843, near Narford Hall, and for a few years worked them successfully, as he in one season obtained 1,000 fowl. But his brother, who then owned Narford Hall, being fond of shooting, and not being disposed to give the lake such absolute quiet as the Decoy necessitated, these two pipes were abandoned in favour of the new Decoy, not far distant, on a separate pool at South Acre, near the vicarage of its owner, as already described.