Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

viii Some abbreviations used in this text c. = about (from Latin circa ): used of a date that is not precisely known, e.g. ‘born c. 1671’. fl. = flourished (from Latin floruit ): used here of a person or organisation known to be alive or active during a known but undetermined period, e.g. ‘the Buckden Hosiery Mill (fl. 1930s/40s)’. (q.v.) = which see (from Latin quod vide ): used to direct the reader’s attention to further information or explanation, e.g. ‘On leaving school, Ellie and her sister went to work at the Buckden Hosiery Mill (q.v.)’. A note on currency Before decimalisation in 1971, the pound sterling (£) was divided into 20 shillings (20s or 20/-) each worth 12 pence (12d), i.e. there were 240 pence in a pound. A decimal pound (still £) has 100 pence (100p) in it, i.e., one shilling (1s or 1/-) has been replaced by 5 pence (5p). But these conversion rates relate only to the moment of decimalisation in 1971. They cannot be used simply to convert earlier amounts (prices, income) into modern values. A meal that cost one shilling in, say, 1840, couldn’t be bought for 5p today. Furthermore, not everything changes in value at the same rate. In 1932, the price (£1,350) of a five-bedroom semi-detached house in a pleasant, rather than fashionable, London suburb was almost exactly equal to twice the annual salary of a middle rank civil servant (£650). In 2009, the price of a similar house was just under £700,000: no longer double but over twenty-two times the modern civil servant’s salary of £30,500 a year ! As an added complication, economic historians use several ways of converting ‘old money’ into new; the results are different in each case. On the whole, therefore, we have not attempted to give modern equivalents to sterling sums !