Page 66 THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

THE BOOK OF DUCK DECOYS.

The site of the Decoy itself has been ploughed up, though its general outline may still be traced. In one of the rooms of the Decoy farm house there are several panels that were moved from the old Decoy house when it was pulled down. These are very interesting, as they indicate the shape of and the method of working the Decoy. The father of the present tenant of the Decoy Farm, who was born in 1772, knew the last man who worked the Decoy, so that it has probably not been in use for 100 years. The last owner of this old Decoy was a Mr Nares, and he is reported to have been so successful, as to have purchased a farm out of the profits of working it.
The present owner of the land is the Rev. F. Jackson, of Parson Drove Vicarage, Wisbeach.

CHATTERIS DECOY.

    Four miles SE. of Chatteris and 3½ miles NE. of Somersham in North Fen.
    Watson, in his History of Wisbeach, as also Wells in his History of the Fens, mentions a Decoy here of which no trace now remains. The land, however, is still called "Decoy Ground," and on an old parish map I find it alluded to as follows:-
    "Site of Decoy erected by Colonel Valentine Warton destroyed by the populace at the restoration."

WHITTLESEY DECOY.

One-and-a-half miles NE. of the village of Whittlesey and long disused.

THE BEDFORD LEVEL.

As this county contains so large a proportion of the celebrated Bedford Level," it may be as well to give here a brief description of a district so unique, as also of the process by which it has been gradually converted from a watery waste to its present state of fertility
A glance at the map shows the great "level" of the Fens comprised an area of 1,306 square miles, and formed part of the counties of Lincoln, Northampton, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Suffolk, and Norfolk, and extended in an almost unbroken surface from the shores of the Wash to the high lands which form its extreme borders.