Vol. XXVII—Part VII.
April—Sept., 1943.
THE
Essex Naturalist:
BEING THE
Journal of the Essex Field Club.
THE DUCK DECOYS OF ESSEX.
By WILLIAM E. GLEGG, F.Z.S., M.B.O.U.
[Read 31st January, 1942.]
DECOYS of some kind or other were said to have existed in
Britain at the beginning of the thirteenth century and they
are known to have given rise to litigation in 1280 and also in
1415 and 1432. In the last-mentioned year a mob armed with
swords and sticks took six hundred wildfowl out of the Abbot's
Decoy at Crowland Monastery, infringing the rights of private
property. Sir R. Payne-Gallwey held the view that the devices
used in these earlier days were not decoys, but traps into which
the ducks were driven by men in boats. It is believed that decoys
as we know them to-day, i.e. with pipes for enticing the birds,
were introduced into this country from Holland. The same
writer states that we have no reliable evidence that decoys, as
now known, even in a primitive form were in use in this country
before the middle of the seventeenth century. The earliest and
most reliable description of a decoy in England for catching
ducks by enticing them is that by Evelyn of the decoy constructed
in St. James's Park in 1665. Ray, writing in 1678, speaks of a
decoy at that date as a "new artifice" lately introduced by the
Dutch and then describes a decoy for enticing wildfowl, much
as is now used.
The word decoy calls for an explanation. It is an abbreviation
of the Dutch term "endekooy," which means Duck Cage. This
led to the creation of a compound word, half English, half
Dutch, Duck-Coy or "duckoy," as it was spelled at the beginning
of the eighteenth century by the owner of Steeple Decoy.
It will be seen as this account unfolds that it is no exaggeration
to say that Essex plays an important part in the history of
British Duck Decoys and that the subject should not be laid aside
as one about which the last word has been said. It seems
certain that these traps for birds in this country were first used
in Lincolnshire and Essex and that the neighbouring counties