Here I look at Pigeon End Spalding, how labelling of the area and its people changed over time and some of its effects.

Gang labour has repeatedly been a means of exploiting workers and suppressing wages driven by a food system that loads costs to the producer creating a race to the bottom on the value of labour.

Rural class structures are very misunderstood. A popular history I was taught was that these people migrated to cities to work. This is a little misleading as in fact that they migrated into industry to work, not all industry was city based, especially coal mining as any visit to the former coal mining villages of the Midlands, Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland will reveal.

“It’s terribly difficult to explain in England to people how much class distinction there is. Its only when you go away and look back that you see it.” Michael Caine

Fed up with cats? These were the proposed remedies in 1866

Here I consider some of the poetry and rhymes arising out of observing and hunting wildfowl

“Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye Four and twenty blackbirds were baked in a pie When the pie was opened the birds began to sing Was not this a dainty dish to set before the king?” At least in the nursery rhyme the blackbirds are alive. Here I explore the eating of this beloved songbird.

In September 1880 a Gosberton farmer had an effective solution to dealing with unscrupulous bailiffs.

Over time bird names and the their collective nouns have changed here are a few examples.

The Norfolk Broads are an important wetland nature reserve, albeit largely a man made product created by peat digging over the centuries. The following account of a shoot on Hickling Broad in 1934 from the Norfolk & Norwich Naturalist Society may appear alarming.

Nowadays a little over 500,000 pinkfeet geese are thought to overwinter in the UK. Certainly where I live in Northumberland I see my fair share from flocks of a few dozen to many hundreds flying over at times. However, this was not always the case and Kenzie Thorpe shared the following figures in May 1964

The Clarkson Memorial in Wisbech was erected in 1880 to celebrate Thomas Clarkson (1760-1846) who campaigned against the slave trade. However, it should be considered that the area was suffering something of a recession/depression especially in agriculture at the time it was erected and prompted this comment from Spalding press

The cottager was a key part of the rural economy in the Fens is here described in Wrangle in 1848. One of the many pieces not to make my book Marsh Fen and Town South LIncolnshire and Beyond.

Nowadays otters make frequent appearances on the River Welland in Spalding. In November 1964, otters were a much rarer sight as seen in the following extract from a Spalding Wildfowler's newsletter in November 1964:

In the 60's the Spalding Wildfowler was somewhat bemused by the latest accessory for women available in South Africa.

These two stories are about Gun Safety including the tale of a person shot twice by the same man.

This is a true story originally told in the 1960's of the sad fate of a pet cat.

A local working class pragmatism in dealing with authority in Grantham County Court.

From flax for cloth to linseed the Fens have a long varied history of growing flax

Marsh Fen and Town South Lincolnshire and Beyond is now also available in paperback from Amazon.