Dunstable Yesteryear: The fields where ducks were reared

The photo, dating from the 1930s, shows some of the ducks being fed at Dell Farm. Sometimes there could have been as many as 4,000 birds on the fields and, from a distance, the white plumage of the flocks made it look as though snow had been falling.

Aylesbury ducks are so-called because rearing the white birds was once a major industry in Aylesbury, where the feathers were much in demand as the filling for quilts.

The new roads on the Dell Farm fields have all been given names associated with ducks, hence Orpington Rise, Watervale, Pintail Croft, Shelduck Field, Abacot Grove and Gressingham Meadow (Orpingtons, for instance, were first bred by William Cook of Orpington and Gressinghams are a cross between a Pekin duck and a wild Mallard first bred in Gressingham, near Lancaster).

The photo here was collected by the late Pat Lovering, who recorded the name of the man in the picture, Alfred Watts. He fed the ducks from a wheelbarrow three or four times a day.

Yesteryear is compiled by John Buckledee, chairman of Dunstable and District Local History Society.