Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

2 up monitorial schools (schools in which senior pupils helped teach the younger ones). * This is was the preferred contemporary spelling. With his friend Joseph Fox, Allen embarked on a fund- raising campaign that in October 1814 brought them to Buckden to meet the vicar, Dr Maltby (q.v.). He was more sympathetic to their cause than most of his Anglican colleagues and over breakfast agreed to try to raise £100 for their funds (Maltby was clearly a morning person: he once entertained Sir Walter Scott to breakfast). The three men may also have talked about teeth: Fox was the country’s leading dental lecturer and author, and Surgeon Dentist Extraordinary to two royal dukes. See also the National Society. allotments. There were at least three distinct types of village allotment: 1 Parish land or property let out to provide income for church, charity or parish officer expenses; 2 Parish or private land let to specific groups (such as the ‘deserving poor’) to allow them to produce their own food; and 3 Statutory allotments. For more information, including maps, see Chapter 10 Gardening in Buckden . almshouses [MapRef 9]: see under charities. Amers, Captain Henry Gallon (1875-1944). By the time Harry Amers became a Buckden resident in 1937, he had been a famous man for over forty years. A child prodigy who played several times for the future Edward VII, he grew up to be a conductor, a composer and the musician of choice when entertainment was required for fashionable Edwardian occasions on both sides of the Atlantic. After serving with the Northumberland Hussars during the First World War, he embarked on a new career as a musical showman. Between 1920 and 1936 he was contracted by Eastbourne Town Council to provide their ‘municipal music’: during the day as Captain H. G. Amers and his Famous Band, and during the evening as Captain Amers and his Famous Orchestra. BBC broadcasts from Eastbourne made him a stalwart of the new medium of the wireless. His arrival at Beech Lawn (q.v.) must therefore have aroused considerable local interest, not only because of Buckden’s strong musical tradition, but also because he was ‘a handsome fellow...always immaculately dressed with a red carnation in his buttonhole and red hair to match [and] much admired by lady members of the audience.’ Alan Cockburn, a schoolboy evacuee in Buckden, remembers him as being still immaculately turned out even in his late sixties. He stayed in Buckden for five or six years, then moved to Devon, where he died in 1944. He was survived by his wife, Kate, and probably some of the Siamese cats he had bred while at Beech Lawn. Anchor. The 1861 census lists two beer-houses called the Anchor. One was at the river end of Mill Road, beside the Coal Wharf, in the home of Samuel Gaunt, wharfman. The other was on the north side of Mill Street, not far from Hunts End, and was kept by William Clarke, agricultural labour. It was a few doors along in one direction from another beer-house, the Quart Pot, and in the other direction a public house, the Falcon. anni horribiles : see Maltby, Edward Harvey and Scarborough, Mrs Jane . Aoltia (sometimes Aolti or Aolte) is a female forename of local origin and unknown etymology, first appearing in the 1830s. Almost all the handful of Aoltias in the UK census records were born in a small area of Huntingdonshire: Grafham, Buckden, Hail Weston; those born elsewhere are descendants of Aoltias. For the curious marital history of Aoltia Mira Thomson, see under Langley family. Aragon Close, Greenway, is a residential cul-de-sac named after Katherine of Aragon (q.v.). Aragon House stands on the corner of St Hugh’s Road and the High Street. A dated brick suggests it was built in 1851, probably replacing an earlier house. It is believed that at one time the occupier supplied horses for the coaching trade, the land behind being used for grazing and fodder. If true, the grazier is likely to have been the occupier of the earlier house, as the demand for coach horses would have been in decline by the 1850s, although he (or she: grazier Sarah Cope appears as a High Street resident in the 1851 census) may have found it almost as profitable to supply horses for the new network of local hauliers and carriers that the railways brought into being. Aragon Singers. In 1985, Margaret Moore moved to St Neots from the north of England, where she had been born into a musical family with a particular interest in singing. She had grown up to become a keen member of church choirs. Thus it was natural for her to join the St Neots Choral Society. The following year one of her fellow singers, Sue Webster, asked if she would be interested in forming a choir for people in Buckden who would like to broaden their repertoire to include more secular music. The Aragon Singers came into being at a meeting held in September 1986, with Margaret as its Musical Director. The name was chosen in tribute to that unwilling resident of Buckden Palace, Katherine of Aragon. The choir’s first performance was at a preview of a Festival of Flowers (which Margaret had designed) in Buckden Towers. So The one-time Anchor beer-house, Mill Road