Gentlemen Of The Marsh

Graham Downing examines how wildfowling was elevated from a pot-filling pursuit to one of the grandest of sports

- Graham Downing

In the beginning, wildfowling was regarded not as a sport, but as a means of filling hungry bellies. When, in 1621, Gervase Markham published the first book on the subject, he titled it Hunger’s Prevention: Or the whole Arte of Fowling by Water and Land.

While the majority of the book’s 17 chapters are devoted to hawking, netting and liming, there is one important chapter on shooting. It is not the sort of shooting that we would recognise today, for the firearms of the early 17th century were totally unsuited to killing birds in flight. Instead, the book describes creeping up to sitting fowl with a matchlock or snaphaunce and shooting them on the water.

Significantly, though, when Markham’s text was copied virtually word for word in 1686 by Nicholas Cox and inserted into his compendium on hunting, hawking, coursing and angling, the new book was entitled The Gentleman’s Recreation. Fowling had been elevated from a pot-filling pastime for the peasantry to a sport for gentlemen.

Outdoor activities

An activity that involved crawling around in freezing mud was of only modest appeal to those from the better classes for the next 100 years. The 19th century, however, was a time of huge change in Britain. As well as rapid technological development in sporting firearms, it brought an appreciation by a certain breed of gentlemen of hardy, physical outdoor activities, of which wildfowling was most certainly one.