Memories of Hale Duck Decoy
Location: Cheshire

On March 12th. 2006, the Friends of Pickerings Pasture held their Memories of Hale Duck Decoy Event, to launch their quest to gather information and memories of past gamekeepers and events on the Hale Duck Decoy. It took place at Pickerings Pasture Visitors Centre and was supported by the attendance of the Lord Mayor and Lord Mayoress of Halton.




12 March 2006
Memories of Hale Duck Decoy
Venue: Pickerings Pasture Visitors Center

The snow came down through the night and continued through the morning. We wondered if anyone would be joining us, after all our hard work of producing photographic displays, posting flyers, laying on refreshments and preparing a powerpoint presentation. We had a number of phone calls , with apologies from people who couldn't make it, through the snow. Then, as it approached 2pm, the start time, the Mayor and Mayoress of Halton arrived, followed by other local people, whose imaginations had been captured by our advertising and articles in local papers.

When the formalities were over, and the powerpoint presentation was delivered we mingled and chatted. After being sure of just one gamekeepers name, a couple of weeks earlier, we ended up with the suggested names of seven! These all need further research to establish dates and to collect other details of their lives and role on the decoy.

The great grandson of one gamekeeper, a Mr James Unsworth, who we think was in that role in the 1890s, brought a family scrapbook along. In it was a photograph of Mr Unsworth, who is buried, locally, in the Hale Church grave yard.

An other Widnes man brought along a copy of the book, Old Widnes and Its Neighbourhood, by Charles Poole, dated 1906. In it was a description of the decoy at Hale and photographs by J W Towers, a member of the Widnes Photographic Society. We had come across the original glass slides of these photographs, a few months earlier, when a past Hale Village resident, who had emigrated to Australia, many years ago, had returned on a visit to the UK. He had passed them on to our group and now we know who took them and that they date back 100 years.

We spoke to and collected names and address of several other local people, who had information, family links to and fond memories of times spent at the decoy. We shall be following up these contacts and making arrangements to make oral history recordings with them.

The newspaper articles and advertising has also lead to a number of phone calls, from people who could not attend the Memories Event. We have made a number of appointments , with these callers, to visit them and record their memories.

We have already done some oral history recordings for this project but this event has introduced us to a lot more contacts and it has been quite an exciting few days for the team working on this project. We are very pleased with the event itself. People were so keen to linger and talk about their connections with the decoy. It was a really positive, interesting and enjoyable day for everyone involved.

If you can help us,with any more information or details, we'd be very pleased to hear from you. The gamekeepers names, that have been suggested to us , between 1890 and 1960, are James Unsworth, Tom Leaks, Harry Mole, Bob Willey, Mr Moore, Alfred Stonehouse and Joseph Leather. Do you know anything about them? Can you add any more names?

Photographs by Lynda Broad