Page 65 HISTORY OF DECOYS.

HISTORY OF DECOYS.


No one living can remember the Decoy being worked, although one old man in the neighbourhood can recollect its existence seventy years ago, when some Decoy ducks were kept there, and a good many wild ones used to frequent the pool in winter. The Decoy had four pipes, and was a square pond with a small rivulet running through it.

DECOYS IN THE COUNTY OF CAMBRIDGE.
This county, like its neighbour Huntingdonshire, possessed in its northern part a large area of fenlands, consisting of 200,000 acres, or nearly half of the Great Bedford Level. The principal Fens were Morris Fen, St. Giles' Fen, and Thorney Fen, north of the River Nen; Laddus Fen, Cranmore Fen, White Fen, Wimblington Fen, Block Fen, and Sutton Fen, south of the River Nen, and between it and the Bedford River or Cut. South of the latter were Downham, Ashwell, Middle, Blunt, North, and Sedge Fens, all of which lay round the town of Ely, and adjacent to the rivers Ouse and Cam. Though Cambridgeshire contained no meres like Norfolk or Huntingdon, still it was and is a network of water channels, that cover its surface from Cambridge and Newmarket to Peterborough and Wisbeach,-and, like other counties containing parts of the Great Bedford Level, it was frequented by hosts of wildfowl in days gone by. It was not, however, a favourable county for Decoys in its Fen districts, for, like Huntingdon, these were liable to frequent floods, and were destitute of trees and underwood.

CAMBRIDGESHIRE.

Decoys in use. None.	Decoys not in use. Leverington. Chatteris. Whittlesey.

LEVERINGTON DECOY.
Two miles NW. of Wisbeach. A map of 1760 shows a Decoy as then existing in the parish of Leverington. There is still a farm that goes by the name of the "Decoy Farm."