Dowsby

The low battlemented 15th century tower of the village church at Dowsby can be clearly seen as you drive north on the B1177, six miles from Bourne. This is a small village on the very edge of the fen with an Elizabethan hall, a few cottages and red-tiled farm buildings to keep company with the church's largely Early English and Decorated styles but extensively restored in 1863-4 at a cost of £1,100. The solid stone western tower is elegant although its pinnacles have been decapitated. Four stones with cable moulding built into the last wall of an aisle reflect the church's Norman origins while the nave, with a big pointed tower arch at one end and a wide chancel arch at the other, also looks venerable though both of its own arcades have been rebuilt, while in a recess is a 14th century stone life-sized and recumbent effigy of Etheldreda Rigdon in a long, tight-waisted gown. 

The church has a chancel with chantry, nave, aisles, south porch and three bells in the tower and a clock erected as a First World War memorial. The carved oak pulpit is modern while the belfry screen and choir stalls were added by parishioners in 1923. There is an ancient font, placed in 1876 upon an octagonal stone base and there are several inscribed tablets including one recording the men of Dowsby who fell in the 1914-18 war. The church registers date from 1670 and there was an interesting charity in the village during the last century when £100 invested in government bonds at 2½% was left in 1844 by James Hurst of Stamford, the income to be used to buy meat annually for distribution to the poor. 

From the churchyard with a row of fine yews and a monkey puzzle shading the gate, you can see the stone built Dowsby Hall through the far trees, picturesque with tall, fanciful gables and pinnacles and a row of nine chimneys and blind windows in the dormers. This was originally a smaller house built for Sir William Rigdon between 1603 and 1610 and most probably designed by the famous Elizabethan architect John Thorpe, also thought to have been responsible for the Red Hall at Bourne. Little is left of the original building and the interior is completely changed. Sir William Rigdon sold the estate before the work commenced and the new owner, Richard Burrell, completed the project soon after taking over in 1610. Richard and Jane Burrell settled at Dowsby Hall which was later inherited by their son John who was knighted at Lincoln on 15th July 1642. The Burrell family are remembered by six brasses in the chancel of the church, including Redmayne Burrell who died in 1682 and others who passed on between then and 1763. 

Since then, the property has been owned by a succession of farming families including the Deans who lived here from 1843 until 1921, the last being Arthur Wellesley Dean (1857-1929), who was the Member of Parliament for Holland with Boston from 1924 until his death, and he also served as a local magistrate. The hall was purchased in 1921 by Mr Leslie Ravensdale Burges who owned it for eight years when it was sold to Trinity College, Cambridge. A subsequent tenant for almost 40 years was Mr Henry Burtt, a farmer and seed specialist, who was awarded the OBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 1981 for his services to the industry.

Born in 1892, he became a farm manager in 1921 and moved to Dowsby Hall to start farming on his own account in 1929, subsequently pioneering production techniques for grass and corn seeds and extending his activities to growing more than 1,000 acres of herbage seed crops. In 1944, he founded the Lincolnshire Seed Growers' Association which, under his chairmanship, gained international recognition, and he became affectionately known as the Ambassador for British Seeds, lecturing and broadcasting on farming subjects in many countries and achieving some fame as the originator of the long-running BBC Radio programme The Archers which became popular as an everyday story of country folk and is still being broadcast today. 

Dowsby was originally Duesby, Dusi's farmstead or village, an old Danish name, but at the time of the Domesday survey in 1086, this had become Dusebi and the passage of the years eventually gave us the Dowsby that we know today. It stands near to the Car Dyke and was therefore known to the Romans. 

It measured 4 feet X 5 feet and because of its large size was thought to have been a communal well. Records preserved in the Lincolnshire County Archives revealed that in 1583, there were 13 cottages in the village and it is therefore reasonable to assume that this well served them all. Workmanship was impressive, the stones, each the size of a house brick, having been evenly cut to fit perfectly together without a binding agent such as cement. The well was about 22 feet deep and after being drained, refilled to a depth of three feet in twenty minutes. Building work necessitated it being filled in and so it has not been preserved.

Dowsby had a famous duck decoy in the 18th century, one of 40 decoys that once operated in Lincolnshire, this one taking over 13,000 birds in a good season. Teal, widgeon, mallard and pochard were among the wildfowl killed between October and April with lesser numbers of shovellers, tufted duck and pintail, all without a shot being fired. Some were sold locally but most were sent to the London markets to supply the tables of the wealthy. The birds from these decoys often included huge numbers of winter migrants and one observer wrote in 1761: "I have often seen wagons drawn by ten or twelve horses apiece, so heavy were they laden." In the early 19th century, it was recorded that 31,200 ducks from ten South Lincolnshire decoys were sent for sale in the capital. 

The word decoy is a corruption of duck-coy from the Dutch word kooi, a cage or pen, and it was this method of capturing wildfowl that was introduced into England from Holland and remained unaltered for over 300 years. The decoy was a small pond hidden away in a wood with curved ditches or pipes covered with nets to form tunnels, open at the pond end and closed at the narrow end. The secluded location attracted ducks that were enticed into the tunnels, often with the use of a trained dog, usually called Piper, and were then trapped and killed. 

The Dowsby Decoy operated from 1763 to 1783 when the number of birds taken annually varied greatly and although substantial profits were made for the first 15 years, the last five seasons showed a loss. When the decoy closed, the wood in which it was situated was put up for sale but only part of it was purchased and the remainder was cleared for use as farmland. A depression in the fields by a clump of trees is all that remains today of the Dowsby Decoy and its pond. Decoyman Robert Michelson and his wife Isabella lie beneath a pair of fine slate headstones in the churchyard outside the south porch. Born in 1735, Robert was 28 when he started to work at the decoy and he died in 1819 at the age of 84.

REVISED MARCH 2004

See also Dowsby village school and Fanny Michelson's 1881 sampler

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