Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

STIRTLOE HOUSE AND HAMLET 143 Another enthusiastic young man, Christopher Thomas, bought the house in 1970 at a sealed bid auction, offers around £20,000 invited. (The contents of the house had been auctioned in September 1969 in a three-day sale, comprising some 1100 lots.) He and his wife, Elspeth, and their four daughters, Kathryn, Bronwen, Jo and Emma moved in. The house and gardens gradually came back to life again, this time with one gardener and one daily help. Much repair work was done to walls, conservatories, kitchen garden, and railings. Roses, shrubs and trees were planted and a modern conservatory was built, the garages improved and the interior of the house repaired and modernised. Stirtloe House is a wonderful family house and thrives with a stream of children, family and friends passing through, and each generation makes its mark and moves on. In 2007 the house came into the ownership of the Angel family, and the Thomas grandchildren will now keep its rooms ringing with noise and laughter. The Angels will make changes to suit their lifestyle and no doubt follow the trends of current fashion as many owners have done before them. As Mac Dowdy of the Architectural Research Group at Wolfson College writes: ‘It is not surprising that Nicholas Pevsner, after a visit to the Palace, the Church, the Manor House and a good lunch at the Lion in Buckden village, looked rather quickly at the front of the house and wrote ‘a semicircular stone porch of columns with fluted capitals, probably dates from late eighteenth Century.’ However like so many houses of its kind, Stirtloe House has a confusion of visual details covering many periods of history, certainly well over 500 years. From this array of architectural detail has emerged the social and economic story of a house—here is a home demonstrating the heritage of the English country house, the additive tradition. The house as we see it today reflects the skilled workmanship of many, many craftsmen through the past 500 or more years, and the enthusiasm of those who have lived in the house to institute and carry out major improvements to the building. Everyone who has lived or will live in this lovely family home owes much to the efforts of the de Ferrers family, who probably built the Tudor house, the Dickman family, who enlarged it in Stuart times, the Alexander family whose energy created the main part of the house we see today, and the Linton family who were responsible for the modern façade and gardens. What will it look like after the next 500 years? With very many thanks to Elizabeth Stazicker for help in tracing the residents of the house, Mac Dowdy for help in dating the building of the house, and to the local Record Office (now Huntingdonshire Archives) and many amateur historians who have helped with this account.