Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

STIRTLOE HOUSE AND HAMLET 137 CHAPTER 7/ STIRTLOE AND THE GRANGE, CASTLE, NUNNERY OR HOUSE AND HAMLET BUILT THERE Elspeth Thomas In this chapter the author tells the story of Stirtloe House, which her family bought in 1970, and its surrounding area. Stirtloe—a part of the Toseland Hundred, and at differing times paying dues to the Manor of Southoe, the Manor of Diddington, and till the early twentieth century, the Manor of Buckden he physical features of the land suggest the origins of the house and hamlet of Stirtloe: from Steort or Sturt meaning tongue of land, and loe meaning a low hill. Old north-south droving roads hugged the edge of the flood-line of the Great Ouse, and several droving tracks can still be seen on the Parliamentary Inclosure map of 1813. These medieval roads bear little resemblance to the present day A1, whose alignment has changed periodically as improvements continue to be made to eighteenth century turnpike, twentieth century trunk road, and now dual carriageway. Morden’s map of 1695 shows roads of equal size on the route of the present A1 and to the east of the present house. Until the early nineteenth century the Great Ouse would have been navigable for commercial traffic as far as Bedford but whilst Offord (confusingly called Oxford in 1780 documents) suggests a ford, the majority of road traffic between Eaton Ford and Huntingdon would have found travelling west to east difficult, and so the north-south droving routes and later the Great North Road defined the probable position of villages, farms and manor houses. One of the earliest routes joins the churches of Little Paxton, Southoe, Diddington and Buckden, dating from the eleventh century onwards: it passed along the back of Stirtloe following the line of the present public footpath bending down to join the present Lucks Lane and thence to the church, and up Silver Street towards Brampton. The origins of a dwelling at Stirtloe are unclear. Whereas Buckden, Diddington and Southoe are recorded, there is no mention of a holding at Stirtloe in the Domesday Book. The ownership of the land at Stirtloe, and the dwellings there, is often very confused. Stirtloe was never a separate manor, and paid feudal dues to the Manor of Southoe Winchester, then Diddington, then Buckden, and in each of these three villages there existed in medieval times two manorial holdings, with another at Broughton, still faintly visible on the modern ordnance survey map. What follows is a brief look at the major changes to the messuage at Stirtloe, which covers both land and buildings and the people who transformed the house from a grange, farm or possibly hunting lodge in the thirteenth century, to the mainly late Georgian house of the twenty-first century. The thirteenth century It is probable that Ralph de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, had a tenant in the grange and farm when, in 1245, he was given deer by the King and a licence to inclose land at Stert, allowed to keep the grange he had built there, and required to allow the King’s deer to go in and out of the inclosure. The Earl of Winchester at this time was the owner of five manors in Southoe, Broughton and Diddington, and on his death in 1274 his estate was divided between three daughters, one third going to Margaret, Countess of Derby. Her family, de Ferrers, had an interest in the Manors of Buckden, Diddington and Southoe until the seventeenth century passing through tortuous family inheritance to the newly created Earl of Cardigan in 1661. It is likely that Margaret de Ferrers eventually owned two thirds of Ralph de Quincy’s estate. The third daughter Elizabeth was married to the Earl of Buchan, a Scottish baron, who would have to have come personally to England to do homage to the King to claim seisin or possession of their inheritance. T