Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire

by W. F. Rawnsley

The family of Kyme, who had a manor near Boston and two villages called after them between Sleaford and Dogdyke, held land in Friskney through the thirteenth century and until 1339, when it passed by marriage to Gilbert Umfraville, whose son, the Earl of Angus, married Maud, daughter of Lord Lucy. She afterwards became the second wife of Henry Percy, first Earl of Northumberland, father of the famous “Hotspur,” whose wife, together with her second husband, Baron Camoys, has such a fine monument in Trotton church near Midhurst, Sussex. Hence, in the east window of the north aisle of the church at Friskney are the arms, amongst others, of Northumberland, Lucy, and Umfraville.

The Earl’s grandson, the second Earl of Northumberland, who was killed at the battle of St. Albans fighting for Henry VI., May 22, 1455, possessed no less than fifty-seven manors in Lincolnshire, many of them inherited from the Kymes.

William de Kyme, uncle of Gilbert Umfraville, left a widow Joan who married Nicolas de Cantelupe. He founded a chantry dedicated to St. Nicolas in Lincoln Cathedral, and she, one dedicated to St. Paul.

LOST INDUSTRIES

It is melancholy to hear of old-fashioned employments fading away, but it is the penalty paid by civilisation all the world over. Friskney in particular may be called the home of lost industries. For instance, “Mossberry or Cranberry Fen,” in this parish, was so named from the immense quantity of cranberries which grew on it, and of which the inhabitants made no use until a Westmorland man, knowing their excellence, taught them; and thence, until the drainage of the fens, thousands of pecks were picked and sent into Cambridgeshire, Yorkshire, and Lancashire every year, 5s. a peck being paid to the gatherers. After the drainage they became very scarce and fetched up to 50s. a peck.

Similarly, before the enclosure of the fens there were at least ten Duck Decoys in this part of the county, of which five were in Friskney, and they sent to the London market in one season over 31,000 ducks. Eighty years ago there were still two in Friskney and one in Wainfleet St. Mary’s, and I remember one in Friskney which still maintained itself, in the sixties, though each year the wild fowl came to it in diminishing numbers.

Bryant’s large map of 1828 shows a decoy near Cowbit Wash, no less than five near the right bank of the River Glen in the angle formed by the “Horseshoe Drove” and the “Counter Drain,” and two on the left bank of the Glen, all the seven being within a two-mile square, and two more further north in the Dowsby Fen, and four in the Sempringham Fen probably made by the Gilbertines.

THE DECOY

The decoy was a piece of water quite hidden by trees, and only to be approached by a plank across the moat which surrounded it, and with a large tract of marshy uncultivated ground extending all round it, the absence of disturbing noises being an essential, for the birds slept there during the day and only took their flight to the coast at evening for feeding. The method of taking them was as follows. The pond had half-a-dozen arms like a star-fish, but all curving to the right, over which nets were arched on bent rods; and these pipes, leading down each in a different direction and gradually narrowing, ended in a purse of netting. All along the pipes were screens, so set that the ducks could not see the man till they had passed him, and lest they should wind him he always held a bit of burning turf before his mouth. Decoy birds enticed by hemp and other floating seed flung to them over the screens kept swimming up the pipes followed by the wild birds, and a little dog was trained to enter the water and pass in and out of the reed screens. The ducks, being curious, would swim up, and the dog, who was rewarded with little bits of cheese, kept reappearing ahead of them, and so led them on to follow the decoys. At last the man showed himself, and the birds—ducks, teal, and widgeon—rushed up the pipe into the purse and were taken. The decoy was only used in November, December, and January, and it is not in use now at all. But there are still two of the woods left round the ponds at Friskney, each about twelve acres, and the water is there to some extent, but the arms are grown over with weeds and are barely traceable. Indeed it is a hundred years and rather more since the famous old decoy man, George Skelton, lived and worked here with his four sons. His great grandson was the last to follow the occupation, but when the numbers caught came to be only three and four a day, it was clear that the business had “given out.” Absolute quiet and freedom from all the little noises which arise wherever the lowliest and smallest of human habitations exist was necessary, for at least a mile all round the wood, and as cultivation spread this could not be obtained. Nothing is so shy as wild-fowl; and Skelton said that even the smell of a saucepan of burnt milk would scare all the duck away. The mode of taking birds in “flight nets” is still practised on the coast, the nets being stretched on poles at several feet above the ground, and the birds flying into them and getting entangled. Plover are taken in this way, and the smaller birds which fly low in companies along by the edge of the sea, or across the mud flats.

A decoy still exists near Croyland, and another at Ashby west of Brigg, in the lower reaches of the Trent; and formerly there were many in Deeping Fen and other parts of Holland. But wild-fowl were not the only birds the Fenmen had to rely on, and Cooper’s “Tame Villatic Fowl,” and the goose and turkey in particular, are a steady source of income, as the Christmas markets in the Fens testify.