Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

STIRTLOE HOUSE AND HAMLET 138 The fifteenth century The earliest traces of the house at Stirtloe date to between 1450 and 1500. In 1451 Elizabeth, widow of William Ferrers, was assigned South Park, Southoe, and ‘Stirtgart’ as dower, so one can presume that there was a dwelling included with the land separately identified. Her estate passed to her daughter, Anne, who had married William Devereux, Lord Ferrers of Chantley, in 1446. Ferrers died fighting with Richard III at Bosworth Field in 1485, one of several owners of the local manors who backed the wrong side and were killed, attainted, and even beheaded! The wood-frame, possibly Tudor, house is now almost certainly enclosed in ancient red brick but the tie beams still exist in the indoor rooms. These beams were not used, except in roof construction, after the end of the fifteenth century, and with the wattle and daub walls still to be seen in part of the kitchen range, it is likely that a large house existed at Stirtloe around 1450 or before. This is borne out by the smoke marks on early beams in the roof where the tie beams, wall plate girth and form indicate a building constructed before bricks were readily available, and fireplaces a future import from France! There is a very large chimney built close to this part of the house which may have served both kitchen and hall, probably built after 1500 when the cost of bricks was reasonable. The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries The buildings in the hamlet of Stirtloe have been many, and recordings of them are very confused. They include Poors farm and house left by William Burberry in 1558 for the benefit of the poor in Bugden; a homestead; a brick kiln; a slaughterhouse, and a brew house—and even a Castle, mentioned in 1780, of which no convincing trace has been found. The park and gardens of the present house, created in the late eighteenth century, have a mass of foundations just beneath the surface, including a fish pond, which hearsay has as providing fish for nuns who lived at Stirtloe. The only corroboration for the dwellings at Stirtloe once being a nunnery, is the several sightings of ghosts, some of whom were said to be in nuns’ habit. The most recent sightings were of Tudor ladies with lace ruffs, only the top part of whose bodies was seen. This must relate to the real problems created for ghostly figures when a 1660s house was created with two floors instead of the three floors of the early Tudor house! The feudal rights for the local manors were given to the bishops of Lincoln by Henry I after 1100, which lends the stories some credence. Except for periods of religious turbulence during the mid-sixteenth century and the seventeenth century, the bishops continued to collect rents for the land until the twentieth century. Who lived in this large house in the sixteenth century? It is possible that members of the de Ferrers family were there after Lord Ferrers’ death in 1485 until the seventeenth century: an Edward Devereux de Ferrers was taken to court in 1600-01 over the ownership of Southoe Manor by Sir Richard Dyer who had ‘good and lawful’ conveyance from Lady Margaret Willoughby. It is also possible that the bishops of Lincoln had use of the house: if so perhaps this was when it became the ‘nunnery’ of legend. Between 1663 and 1689, and possibly earlier or later, the Dickman family lived at Stirtloe. A Jonathan Dickman inherited the house from his brother, a London lawyer. Jonathan and his wife Sarah had ten children, all christened in St Mary’s Church, Buckden (one was buried in the year of his christening). The house was large enough in 1662 to be rated for tax with six hearths, later reduced to four, and in 1774 there were five hearths. Jonathan may have removed the thatch from the roof and replaced it with pantiles and wood shingles. The main roof today has a pitch of 45º, an indication of early roofing materials replaced by the present blue slates late in the eighteenth century. The seventeenth-century house was probably L- shaped, based on the original brick enclosed Tudor house and its service areas, with a new wing based on the Bath and York stone flags still to be seen in today’s house: these flagstones were in fashion between 1525 and 1725. The present staircase was put in between 1760 and 1775, but the style and height of the door opening beneath it show that the Georgian stairs replaced an earlier staircase in a house built around 1640. Soon after 1640 the fashion would have been for a house built on the ‘compact plan’—that is, one in which the comfort and grandeur characteristic of a larger residence were compressed into a relatively small house. As the Dickmans had such a large family, their renovations are likely to have been intended to provide a family with rather more spacious living quarters: a ‘house of substance’. Like many other people who undertake building renovation, the Dickmans seem later to be short of money and in 1684 sold 1½ acres of woodground in Stirtloe to John Rugge, gent., (son of Mrs Rugge who had eleven hearths in Buckden in 1662!). Jonathan Dickman died in 1689. In 1692, John Rugge is said to be ‘of Stirtloe House’, and sometime after this the house was sold to William Windress of Eaton Socon, called ‘Colonel Windress’ in the Buckden Manorial Roll. Colonel Windress bought ‘the capital messuage (a substantial house plus land) at Stirtloe with a close of pasture, and an orchard called the Plantation, belonging to Jonathon Dickman.’ The 1750 Manorial Roll