Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

1 A A1. Had the founder of the Michelin Tyre Company had his way, Buckden today would be sitting astride the N1. The rapid spread of motor traffic in the first decade of the 20thC meant that the signing and maintenance of the road system needed to be drastically overhauled. A Roads Board was established in 1910, and in 1913 set about devising a numerical classification that would make it simple to identify the route of every road in the country. The First World War then intervened, and it was not until 1919 that the new Ministry of Transport was able to return to the problem. During 1920, it worked out a scheme which owed something to that already adopted in France. Under this, major thoroughfares such as the Great North Road would be given a number with an A prefix, and lesser roads a B number. André Michelin, who had been advising the British government urged that the French of use of N (for National routes) was a more sensible classification than A, but Sir Henry Maybury, senior MOT engineer, was having none of that. So as from the summer of 1921 A1 it was. A1, bodies buried under. According to dowser David Trump, there are 234 bodies buried under the central reservation of the A1 just south of its junction with the road from Brampton. The signpost at this junction features in an 1859 water-colour sketch; an accompanying note states that there were once five stumps at the foot of the post, ‘with a fifth which was driven thru the body of a murderer buried according to custom of the time, at this spot’. The signpost may have given its name to White Post Close, a small field shown on the Buckden enclosure map. See also Cruel Tree and Cut Throat Clos e. accidents, shooting. In May 1901, Walter Harry Brightman of Buckden Wood Farm accidentally discharged his shotgun into his left hand while out shooting crows. As a result his fourth finger ‘and part of the hand below it’ had to be amputated at Huntingdon Hospital. Fortunately this did not prevent his marrying Abbotsley farmer’s daughter Amelia Jane Sheard in 1904. Accidents of this kind were rare but sometimes memorable: a St Neots hairdresser’s son accidentally shot his own arm off on Christmas Day 1837, and in September 1819 it was reported that ‘Last Sunday a gentleman on the Union coach having stopped at Buckden to take some refreshment, a double-barrelled fowling-piece which he held betwixt his legs, by some accident happened to slip from his hand, when it instantly went off, and the charge lodging in the back parts of his leg and thigh, they were so lacerated, that amputation was rendered indispensable, which the patient next day underwent with the greatest fortitude, and, we understand, is going on well.’ Happily, there is nothing in the Buckden burial register to suggest that he stopped going on well. Acheulian hand axes date from between 400,000 and 200,000 BC; one was unearthed at 28 Vineyard Way in April 1977. This type of crude stone implement was developed during the lower/middle Palaeolithic period (the Old Stone Age), when early man was living within the ice age with its alternate glacial and mild periods. The earliest type of hand axes, known as Abbevillian, were produced 500,000 to 450,000 years ago by striking flints with stone hammers and are characterised by large deep flaking. The Abbevillian people were driven from Britain (which was then still joined to the European continent) by the second glaciation. During the warmer second interglacial period some 400,000 years ago, Britain was re-populated by the Acheulians, who brought with them a better made and less crude type of hand axe. This was almond-shaped with shallow flake scars made with a bone or wooden baton. These were the early men generally referred to as Neanderthal. Buckden’s hand axe would therefore appear to be from the early or lower Acheulian period. See Plate 3.2.2 aggregate extraction: see mineral extraction. agriculture in Buckden. From the 17thC onwards, Huntingdonshire was known as an area of exceptionally fine meadows and pasture, and productive arable land. How well these natural resources were managed varied over the years, but in the course of the 19thC, some of the county’s larger farmers became nationally known for their innovativeness and willingness to adopt new techniques. Prominent among them were the Cranfield family, whose farming activities were mainly centred on Buckden and Brampton. Like the Cranfields, the Bowyers – a long- established Buckden farming family – were millers, with a keen eye for making use of new technology such as the railways to increase their productivity and expand the market for their produce. Alongside these large holdings were the many small and medium sized farms and market garden that used to characterize the English rural scene. The gradual reduction in their numbers, as food production became dominated by economies of scale and competition from imports, means that farming is no longer the major contributor to Buckden’s economy; nor does it dictate the village's social structure. Nonetheless, and despite the loss of land to housing, roads, recreation and mineral extraction, agriculture still unmistakably shapes the parish’s landscape – except in one major respect. Well within living memory, you could not have walked far in any direction from, or even within, the village without coming across cattle, sheep, pigs, poultry and working horses. There is now very little livestock visible in Buckden. For more on farming and land use, see Chapter 9. Alderson, Sir Edward Hall (1787-1857). When still an eighteen year-old, this humane judge and light versifier spent several months in Buckden being coached by the vicar, Dr Maltby (q.v.), before going up to Caius College, Cambridge. In March 1831, chance brought him back to Huntingdon as one of the justices presiding over the trials of the sixty or so prisoners accused of taking part in the previous winter’s agricultural riots. They included five Buckden labourers, and one of the prosecuting lawyers was his old tutor’s son, E. H. Maltby. See under machine- breaking. Allen, William (1770-1843) was a Quaker scientist and philanthropist whose interest in education led him to rescue the Royal Lancasterian* Society from financial disaster. The aim of the society, later renamed the British and Foreign School Society, was to extend education to the largest possible number of children of the poor by setting