HISTORY OF DECOYS. | |
| Mr. Smith says that he has killed 36 dozen in one day, 100 dozen in one week, and in one season 700 dozen wildfowl off this pool, though only an acre in extent. It is said that the Decoy, while in working order, was very lucrative to the owner, bringing in several hundred pounds a year. Its proximity, however, to the rival Decoy at Old Mose Hall, situated close by, led to so much dispute between the Decoymen (each trying to decoy the other's birds) that both pools were eventually given up. Mr. James Smith, above referred to, is the last remaining of the old race of Essex Decoymen, and he not only worked the Great Oakley Hall Decoy with much success, but in his youth the Marshhouse Decoy (Mr R. Page's) as well. Mr. Smith, though now eighty years of age, is a fine specimen of an old Decoyman, and his recollections of Decoys and Decoying are both accurate and interesting. He is, however, very poor, and has to work hard for his living as a shoemaker; although, when adorned with the Corporation cocked hat, gold lace petticoats, and bearing the mace of his Worship the Mayor of Harwich, he is very imposing, for he is still upright as in his youth, and well over 6 ft. high. The following letter from Colonel Leathes (see Fritton Decoy), in regard to old Mr. Smith and the Oakley Hall Decoy, is so good that I cannot refrain from giving it in full, besides which it contains no little information:- | |
GREAT OAKLEY HALL DECOY. | |
Letter from Colonel LEATHES describing an interview with old Mr. SMITH. | "I have had a long conversation with old Mr. Smith, who was the celebrated Decoyman on the Oakley Hall estate upwards of fifty years ago. Smith appears, though now a man of eighty, to remember everything in connection with the working of the Decoy very clearly. He tells me his father began to employ him at the age of fourteen, and that at that period the take of ducks was enormous, considering the size of the Decoy pond. Oakley Decoy consisted of one acre only of water; it was circular, and fenced all round with a high wooden palisade, the Decoy pipes being made in the usual fashion all round the pond, so as to be worked according to the wind. |
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