HISTORY OF DECOYS. i39 



based on actual experience, which had up to that time been pubhshed. 

 The date of its construction is unknown. 



Acle, II miles E. from Norwich, on the property of Lord Calthorpe at 

 Acle. — A Decoy was worked here nearly fifty years ago by a man named 

 Johnson. It is said to have had three pipes, traces of which are still 

 visible, though much overgrown. 



Matitby, 2^ miles W. of East Caistor, between West Caistor and 

 Runham.— It is uncertain when this Decoy ceased to be worked. Mr. 

 Fellowes of Shotesham Park, the owner of it, possesses a letter written by 

 George Skelton, dated Winterton, March 1833, offering to hire it, from 

 which letter it appears that at that date it was out of repair. The offer, 

 however, was declined, Mr. Fellowes preferring the shooting, and the 

 Decoy has never been worked since. The pond is still the resort of large 

 numbers of wildfowl, and the place is kept perfectly quiet, the pipes and the 

 posts of the screens remaining. It was a very perfect Decoy in its day, of 

 small size, with 4 pipes, and was especially successful in luring the fowl off 

 Breydon Water, where in those days they abounded. 



Its position is i^ miles on the north bank of the River Bure, to the 

 right of a line drawn from Thrigby to Ru7iham, on the sea-coast. 



Besthorpe. — On what is still known as the Decoy Common, in the 

 parish of Besthorpe, \\ mile from Atdeborough, there was formerly a 

 Decoy, which is believed to have been abandoned about the time of the 

 enclosure of the common in 1815. An old man, eighty-five years of age, 

 who had resided in the neighbourhood all his life, stated in 1878 to a 

 correspondent of Mr. Southwell's, that the common was formerly usually 

 under water, and that the ducks used to resort to it up to the date of its 

 enclosure. He could give no information, however, as to the working of 

 the Decoy. 



Narford Hall. — The Rev. J. Fountaine, previous to his constructing 

 the Decoy at South Acre, made two pipes on the large lake in 1843, near 

 Narford Hall, and for a few years worked them successfully, as he in 

 one season obtained 1,000 fowl. But his brother, who then owned Narford 

 Hall, being fond of shooting, and not being disposed to give the lake such 

 absolute quiet as the Decoy necessitated, these two pipes were aban- 

 doned in favour of the new Decoy, not far distant, on a separate pool at 

 South Acre, near the vicarage of its owner, as already described. 



