Post-war
Among the treasures held in the archive of the village's local history society is a modest but vivid piece of writing: an account of a year in the life of a gamekeeper, penned by George Clarke, Head Gamekeeper at Hall Place. The story of how this article came to reach modern readers is almost as interesting as the article itself, and it says much about the way village history is preserved, passed along and given new life.
The piece first appeared in 1955 in Threads, the house magazine produced by I&R Morley. Its editor, Alfred Houghton, commissioned Clarke to write about his work, and the gamekeeper responded with a frank and detailed description of the trials of rearing pheasants. Clarke is also remembered in the recollections gathered in We Had Everything…, a reminder that he was a familiar and respected figure in the parish. Many years later, Alfred Houghton kindly gave his permission for the article to be republished, and it duly appeared in the Parish Magazine of May/June 2003, introducing a new generation of villagers to the keeper's world. Houghton did not live long after granting that permission, but his generosity ensured that Clarke's words survived.
So what did the job actually involve? Clarke's account makes clear that the keeper's year began long before any shooting. Pheasants normally start laying around the first week of April, though a mild spring can tempt them into March. That early start carries a risk, because a late frost can spoil eggs laid ahead of the season. From the moment the first clutches appeared, the keeper was on guard against a whole gallery of enemies. Members of the crow family — magpies, crows, jackdaws and jays — will happily raid nests for eggs, while hawks and owls prey on small chicks once hatched. On the ground, weasels and stoats lurked as a constant threat to the birds in Clarke's care. He also noted a change in the balance of predation: with rabbits largely wiped out, foxes had turned their attention to pheasants and were taking a heavier toll than before.
A hen pheasant will lay a clutch of roughly a dozen to fifteen eggs. Eggs from the first laying were collected and placed under broody hens, which proved reliable foster mothers. Depending on her size, a hen could comfortably cover between eighteen and twenty-one eggs. Even then, the keeper's duties never paused: each sitting hen was lifted off her eggs once a day, for somewhere between a quarter of an hour and half an hour, so she could feed.
The hatching stage brought its own heartaches. Eggs could be broken for two main reasons — shells too thin to withstand pressure, or a restless hen fidgeting on her nest. Worse still, some hens simply abandoned their sitting, and eggs left uncovered in that way quickly chilled and were lost. Before any hen was taken out to the rearing field, she was thoroughly dusted to rid her of lice. And nature can be cruel in unexpected ways: Clarke recorded that certain hens would kill their chicks the moment they hatched. Against all these hazards, he reckoned that as many as a quarter of the birds could be lost before they ever reached the rearing field.
Once the chicks were ready for outdoors, the work shifted to the rearing ground. Coops were repaired and creosoted, then set out at intervals of about twenty yards. Each coop housed a brood of fifteen to eighteen chicks. For the first twenty-four hours no food was given at all. After that, feeding fell into a routine of two kinds of food, moist and dry. The moist mixture was biscuit meal blended with cod liver oil, scalded and then sieved. Meals were served three times a day, at roughly seven in the morning, one in the afternoon and six in the evening. Cleanliness mattered desperately: any sour food left lying about could bring on fatal trouble in the intestines of young birds. Every night, around ten or eleven o'clock, the coops were shut up for safety.
As the birds grew, their diet changed to boiled grain — rice or maize — and they developed a taste for minced rabbit as well. Disease was an ever-present dread; Clarke recalled an occasion when sickness swept through the rearing field and took a heavy toll despite every precaution. His worries were such that a friend once told him he would rather commit suicide than take on the job. Watch had to be kept by day and sometimes through the night, with the keeper waiting, gun at hand, for any intruder drawn to the pens. Even the old hen played her part, her noisy alarm warning of strangers approaching.
In time the young birds were moved to the woods to take their first proper flights. By then a curious bond had formed: at feeding time the birds would come running to meet the whistling keeper. October brought full plumage, the cock birds dressed in their beautiful colourings, and with it the start of the shooting season. The Boss at Hall Place was Lord Hollenden, and keeper and landowner shared the same ambition — a big bag. All the anxieties of the year, Clarke wrote, dissolved at last when the pheasants hung in the game larder.
For readers who wish to explore this world further, Douglas Pankhurst's Memories covers gamekeeping and shooting in Leigh, and pairs well with Clarke's account of a hard but devoted working life.