Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

STIRTLOE HOUSE AND HAMLET 141 Thomas Bowyer. Occasionally people are said to be ‘of Stirtloe’ as they own land not the house: this could apply to the earlier John Rugge, his son William Rugg, Thomas Williams and Israel Reynolds, all of whom are associated with the Manor in Buckden as well as Stirtloe, and may have rented or owned the messuage at Stirtloe at some time. It is surprising with such a wealth of Linton family documents now available in the Huntingdonshire Archives, that no accounts exist of money paid for new building at Stirtloe in the nineteenth century when very considerable work was undertaken, so again only the fashion and style of the building gives an approximate date for the work. John Linton enlarged his new ‘capital mansion’ considerably, adding two wings to the Georgian house, probably around 1820—the semi-circular portico entrance dates from early in the nineteenth century, as shown by the fine decoration of the pillars and the delicate curved glazing bars. The windows, some of them false, of the new north and south wings match the Georgian windows still remaining at the rear of the main block. The interior of the south wing provided a Regency-style reception room with a beautiful cornice. It was intended, no doubt, to provide a room for soirees, music and dancing, with two additional bedrooms above. To balance the front aspect of the house the north wing was built to match the south, enclosing the three storeys of the timber framed house, which was probably enclosed already in red brick. Thus John Linton created three new bedrooms for his family, the upstairs of the Tudor wing now being in use by live- in servants. The land around the house had been scheduled for enclosure in 1813 and during the next twenty years John Linton bought land and cottages to increase his estate and park land. The house has a drive sweeping west almost into Stirtloe Park then curving east to give a dramatic approach to the front. This was probably created after the farmland around was enclosed. The drive would have been a fashionable and contemporary approach to a recently completed post-enclosure house. John Linton died in 1834, aged eighty-three, and was succeeded by John junior. A career cavalryman, he had been with the 6th (Inniskilling) Dragoons at the battle of Waterloo in 1815, and thereafter rose through the ranks by purchase and merit to retire as a Lieutenant-Colonel. There is an impressive monument in St Mary’s Church to the two John Lintons and their wives Isabella and Louisa. The funeral of the first John was obviously a grand affair since it cost £100 6s. 0d., paid to a Mrs Bryant, and changing the coat of arms on the carriage cost £2 5s. 0d., paid to a John Gilbert. As his sister’s 1824 marriage settlement indicates, John junior—henceforth referred to as Colonel Linton—may already have been living at Stirtloe well before his father died. He now inherited a very substantial house with several acres of gardens and parkland, and much agricultural land in and around Buckden. He was a bachelor at the time, and remained so until 1840, when at the age of forty-eight he married Louisa Wingfield of Rutland, who was nearly fifteen years his junior. The marriage was brief— Louisa died in 1847, aged only forty-one—and produced no children. Colonel Linton outlived her by thirty years; he did not re-marry. Under his ownership the windows of the front of the house were altered and replaced with Victorian four-pane sashed windows of plate glass, which became fashionable following the Great Exhibition of 1851. He planted the striking Wellingtonia trees in the garden and park at the same time, probably creating a large conservatory with piped heating, and a bathroom in the house above it, and an outside toilet beside it—replacing the outdoor two-header for the gentry and single-header for the servants, still to be seen. This shows a very modern approach since interior bathrooms were only gradually introduced after 1826 and in many houses not till the twentieth century. The laundry with its chimney was also built at this time, probably on the site of the Tudor kitchens above the cellars, of which two still exist. These may have been restored in the seventeenth century or early eighteenth century. Greenhouses were built in the kitchen garden, with underground water storage fed by water from the river drawn by a windmill on the high land to the south-east of the house. So whilst the first John Linton created an imposing house, drive and garden, the second modernised, extended and improved the house and grounds. Clearly a practical man, he referred to himself after his retirement from the army as a ‘farmer of 500 acres’ (rather than as merely a landed proprietor). As he entered childless into old age, the family and their advisers had begun to plan for the future of Stirtloe. The likely (and in the event, actual) heir was the colonel’s brother, the Reverend Henry Linton, himself an old man, who had spent his life in the church, first as curate and vicar of Diddington and then as a canon in Oxford. He was therefore unfitted by both age and profession to take over the management of an agricultural estate. That role was allocated to his second son, another John. As early as 1861, this John had moved in with his uncle, living at Stirtloe House and working on the farm. By 1871, he had been promoted to ‘farmer’s assistant’ and was living at Buckden Wood Farm (on what is now Perry Road). In 1877, he