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Duck Decoy site in Hermitage Wood is a post-medieval decoy installation located in Huntingdonshire. The site represents the remains of an artificial waterfowl trapping system, a technology that became increasingly common in England from the sixteenth century onwards and remained in use through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Duck decoys functioned through a combination of carefully engineered water channels, screening vegetation, and trained decoy ducks to lure wild waterfowl into confinement areas where they could be captured. The Hermitage Wood example survives as an earthwork monument that preserves evidence of this specialized hunting practice, which supplied wildfowl to both aristocratic households and commercial markets during the early modern period.
Duck Decoy site in Hermitage Wood is a scheduled monument protected by Historic England under reference 1006857. View the official record →
Duck Decoy site in Hermitage Wood is a post-medieval decoy installation located in Huntingdonshire. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by Historic England (NHLE) under reference 1006857.
Duck Decoy site in Hermitage Wood is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by Historic England (NHLE) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in England. The official designation reference is 1006857.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Roman barrow 450m south west of Stukeley Park (3.8 km), Roman barrow adjacent to Ermine Street, 290m east of St Bartholomew's Church (4 km), 'The Moat': a motte and bailey castle 700m west of Mayfield Heath Farm (5.7 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 15 strands of Duck Decoy site in Hermitage Wood's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Duck Decoy site in Hermitage Wood stands on Kellaways Formation And Oxford Clay Formation (Undifferentiated), bedrock that formed in the Oxfordian. The rock here is mudstone, siltstone and sandstone.