Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

THE HISTORY OF BUCKDEN 92 bag they were prepared to let them have.’ One fears that Buckdeners were still apt to be ‘cantankerous and cliquey’, though, reading in 1933 in the same minute book that Buckden and Brampton ‘Definitely wished to remain as they were and would not consider amalgamating.’ Be that as it may, the ‘quarrelsome’ Buckdeners began the 1930s with the settlement of a very longstanding feud – and a peal of bells. The Church had, and has, five early bells, the first dating from the 16th century and inscribed ‘Sca Katherina Ora Pro Nobis’ (St. Katherine pray for us), and the last cast in 1627. They had been rung frequently in the seventeenth century, as the Churchwardens’ Accounts show, every time the bishop arrived in the village as well as at festivals, and the ringing continued into the nineteenth century. However between 1863 and 1930 the bells were silent following a dispute between the vicar and the ringers reputed to have been about the ringers’ beer allowance which it had been their custom to consume in the belfry. When the vicar banned this practice they staged a strike which lasted a very long time. The sound of bells in 1930 was not so out-of-place as might be thought, for although the thirties were a time of world-wide depression, Buckden escaped the worst effects, which fell on industrial areas. In fact the growing popularity of the motor-car meant that Buckden benefited once again from its position on the Great North Road. Council houses were built in Silver Street and the village also spread up Perry Road. The inhabitants – still about a thousand of them – largely made their own amusements and the village boasted a rifle range, a brass band and an operatic society. A spectacular event took place in 1932 when ‘The Pageant of the Centuries’ was presented at Buckden Palace in aid of the County Hospital. In sixteen scenes it showed all the royal visitors to Buckden whom we have rather neglected, from Richard the Lionheart through Edward I, James I to George III (some of their visits better authenticated than others). It also featured Cardinal Wolsey, who stayed overnight here in his period of disgrace; the two young sons of the Duke of Suffolk, Charles and Henry Brandon, who fled to Buckden to escape the sweating sickness in 1551, died of it and are buried in the churchyard; and the ‘Witch of Warboys’, a harmless old woman tried at Buckden in 1592 and burnt to death 1 . It was a great success. Three years later George V’s Silver Jubilee was the occasion for more home-grown entertainment including a Church service, a parade of ‘decorated cycles, prams etc.’, sports, dancing and a bonfire as grand finale. Once again, as a generation before, this contentment was not allowed to last: it was disrupted by the Second World War. Sixteen names were to be added to the war memorial, on supplementary blocks. Although it suffered little direct damage, the village had to cope with shortages, which it did by cultivating allotments, and play host to evacuees. Tollington School from Finsbury Park in London was evacuated to Buckden, and the Methodist Sunday School (built in 1911) became its educational centre. The 1950s were a chance for quiet recovery between the destruction of war and the sixties’ unprecedented expansion. The village was looking backwards and forwards. In 1952 Bowtells celebrated fifty years of business on the High Street site. Before 1902 there had been a shop there for at least a hundred and fifty years, but Bowtells had expanded it greatly, building the present shop with its Elizabethan-style front in 1923. Looking to the future was Mr. W. B. Carter, an ex-naval man who settled in Buckden and developed a small boat-hiring business at Buckden Mill and later bought eleven acres of land beside the river which he turned into Buckden Marina. There was a real coronation to celebrate in 1953 and in the same year and the following four Buckden crowned a May Queen in an annual Festival. The most spectacular changes in the village’s history took place in the second half of the century, during which Buckden’s population has more than doubled; from 1158 in 1961 it increased to 2490 in 1975 and by 2008 to an estimated 2515. Housing the influx of people necessitated new housing estates, but these have largely been planned with care and the village centre is unspoilt. An eighteenth-century Bugdener would soon find his way about, helped by the way road-names have preserved old features of the village like the Bishop’s vineyard, the glebe (vicar’s land) and the manor house’s gardens. The re-routing of the A1 to by-pass the village centre made the High Street less hectic. The school had to expand greatly to provide for the expanding population: in 1966 a new infant school was opened and in 1972 the junior school. The infants’ section had to be extensively rebuilt after a fire in 1978. After certain vicissitudes the Palace returned to the Catholic Church and in 1956 was granted to the Claretian Order who carried out restoration work and also built a fine Roman Catholic church for the village and a parish hall. Other new facilities for the community are the recreation ground and the village hall. The Buckden Roundabout , a monthly newsletter produced by the joint churches, began in the 1970s and has been a great success. In 1971 the Burberry Homes were opened to care for more of the elderly parishioners. They were built with money from Burberry’s endowment and other village charities. There can surely be no more solid 1 For more on this and similar events see entry on pageants in the A to Z Section