Keepering is still vital

There were McCreaths, McWhirters, McQuakers, McHargs and McKeowns, Swans, Campbells and Laings — all of them the old names of lowland Scotland.

I was idly flicking through a digitised copy of the 1910 census returns for my village. The census recorded names, ages and occupations. There were blacksmiths, carriage drivers, fruit growers, a profusion of servants — even a ‘temperance hotel keeper’. There were also three gamekeepers and eight shepherds. We have one of each now.

This is far from unique to my little village. Nationwide, the number of gamekeepers has dropped a long way since the early decades of the 20th century. The 1911 census records 17,148 gamekeepers in England and Wales and 5,908 in Scotland.

By 1931 the number of gamekeepers in England