APPENDICES 



APPENDIX A (p. 37). 



Salmon Fishery. Both locally, and thence to the 

 country at large, the bay beneath the Beachley and the 

 Sedbury Cliffs was very important, as being one centre 

 of the Severn Salmon Fisheries. The following notes by 

 Mr. Frank Buckland, 1 Government Inspector of Salmon 

 Fishing for England and Wales, are interesting : "The 

 visitor will observe in the lower estuary stretching for a 

 considerable distance into the water from the muddy 

 banks, rude piers made entirely of wicker work, which 

 look like large eel-baskets ; these are called ' ranks ' of 

 ' putchers.' Each putcher is about 5 ft. 6 in. long, and 

 21 inches across the mouth. A framework is made by 

 driving stakes into the mud, and the putchers are then 

 fastened together in rows one above the other, often to the 

 height of 10 feet or more ; these great walls of baskets look 

 not unlike, as my friend the late John Keast Lord remarked, 

 ' a gigantic wine rack filled with bottles, encased in wicker 

 work.' As the salmon come along with the tide in the thick 

 muddy Severn water, they run their noses into the open 

 mouths of the putchers, and speedily get jammed up at the 

 narrow end ; the poor things cannot turn, and the more 

 they struggle to get out, the firmer they become wedged in ; 

 as the tide recedes they are left high and dry. I have often 

 observed that wasps wait about till the tide goes down, and 

 then take first cut at the salmon. A great many first-class 

 Severn salmon are caught in these putchers and sent to the 

 London market." 



1 See Log Book of a Fisherman, &c., by Frank Buckland, M.A., pp 

 366, 367. 



327 



