Edith Alice                              
Born December 20th.1854 at Blackrock. Co.Cork.
Married April 25th.1877 at St.Andrews, Westminster 
to Sir Ralph William Frankland Payne-Gallwey, 3rd Baronet.
Ralph, born in 1848, died November 24th 1916.
Edith died November 12th 1953 aged 98.
Sir Ralph inherited Thirkleby Hall with its 200 acre Park in 1881.
The estate extended to 712 acres with a handsome avenue of Lime trees. The hall was noted for its great library.
It was designed by James Wyatt and is the ancestral home of the Frankland family.
It was demolished in 1927.


This photograph of Ralph was taken by his mother in the 1850's and is held in the library of the Swansea museum.

"Spy" cartoon of Sir Ralph in Vanity Fair
in 1893
Edith and Sir Ralph lived at Thirkelby Park, Thirsk, N.Yorkshire.
They had a son, Frankland a daughter, Dorothy.
Ralph was educated at Eton and served in the Rifle Brigade.
He was a "famous wildfowler and sporting author", founding President of the Wildfowlers' Association of Great Britain and Ireland.       
He was a magistrate.
He was also a serious historian with several books recently re-printed.
and a talented artist illustrating his own books.

"Their son, Frankland, died in action in WW1 without witnesses. The family lived on the slim hope that he might have been taken prisoner. “Theirs would be a lonely vigil,” and after the deaths of several young cousins, Lady Payne-Gallwey “willfully destroyed all photographs of her son,” and became a “sad, retiring figure.”		    
                     Edith
His books include:
The book of duck decoys (1886).
Shooting-field and covert (1887).
'Field and Covert' and 'Moor and Marsh'. (1889)
 The Fowler in Ireland (1902).
The projectile-throwing engines of the ancients (1903)
The Crossbow (1907and re-published in 1976 & 1990).
Mystery of Maria Stella, Lady Newborough (1907),
High Pheasants in Theory and Practice (1913; re-published 2006)
Letters to young shooters on the choice and use of a gun (1914)
He edited other books and wrote articles in various journals.
 
"Sir Ralph was an obsessive gentleman eccentric who shot all the time everything from bows to punt guns. By 1886 he had shot six to seven thousand ducks".  


Joseph Whitaker describes Sir Ralph's Duck Decoy in his book
"British Duck Decoys of To-Day, 1918": 
About half-a-mile further on we turned to the right and drove down a grassy lane, and soon came to our destination.  There were two plantations, one on either side, and in the right-hand one was the decoy.  A tall pale fence ran along the roadside.  Impervious to intruders, the pool is only a score or so yards away.  It is an acre in extent, and has three pipes, but at present only two are used.  They are 70 yards long, have iron hoops, and iron stays at the mouth; they are 14 feet high, and 8 yards over the water.  They are covered with wire.  The dog-jumps are of wood; this I don't like, as now and again the dog catches his hind feet on the top, and his claws scrape and rattle and disturb the ducks.  The screens are of wood boards 6 feet high, and creosoted.  The peep-holes are slits of 3 inches long and ½ inch wide.  It is a tempting-looking pool, but I consider the trees are much too near its edge and should be cut down farther back.  This would give ducks greater confidence to settle down, and let more sunlight in.