DECOYS. 44t 



the career of this interesting place by drainage and its inevitable 

 concomitants. As long ago as 1616, a decade before 

 Vermuyden entered upon his agreement to reclaim the adjoin- 

 ing levels of Hatfield, the Doncaster Corporation was anxious 

 to improve the Carrs adjacent to the town. It would appear 

 that nothing material was done towards the attainment of 

 the ends indicated for many years. In 1762, however, Mr. 

 John Smeaton was consulted as to the feasibility of carrying 

 out ihis drainage. He inspected the Carrs, and reported 

 hopefully to the Corporation in July 1762, and an application 

 was successfully made to Parliament in 1764 for their drainage 

 and enclosure. 



The drainage of the Carrs seems to have been regarded 

 as a death-blow to the success of the Decoy ; but the district 

 must have abounded in wild- fowl for many years after the 

 initial stages of reclamation had been commenced. The 

 end, however, was foreshadowed as early as 1765, when Mr. 

 Robert Hudson was requested by the Corporation to view 

 and value the wood in the Decoy ; and Hatfield (" Historical 

 Notices of Doncaster "), tells us that the last decoyman was 

 one William Fenton, who died in the year 1794, and that all 

 the pipes were in existence in 1778. The occupation of the 

 Decoy having evidently long since passed away, the site was 

 planted in the year 1805. In 1830 the wood was valued at 

 £27 per acre, and the land at £22, making a total of £392, 

 so that it is due to the investors — the Corporation — to assume 

 that the poor of Doncaster fared not amiss from this unique 

 speculation in the annals of investments. But the site of 

 the Doncaster Decoy was yet to witness a more important 

 event in the record of the nation's progress than that already 

 experienced from the comparative antiquated art of drainage. 

 In the year 1849 the main line of the Great Northern Railway 

 pierced almost the centre of this once zealously guarded 

 sanctuary, occupying about two acres of its area. Thus 

 to-day the traveller by this favourite route between the 

 metropolis and the north is carried unconsciously through 

 what were once the scared precincts of a classical, because the 

 most time-honoured, British wild-fowl Decoy. 



