Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

CONEYGARTHS 145 oval window was added in the nineteenth century; it took a craftsman a week to make a new one when it had to be replaced in the 1980s. The eighteenth-century front door is six-panelled, with a bracketed triangular pediment. The doorway to the rear has a seventeenth-century studded door. Much of the interior is contemporary with the original building or from the eighteenth century. It is a large house: twelve people slept there on the night of the 1861 census, seven adults, one child and four servants. The bishop’s nephew More than one Green family has lived in Buckden. One of them was closely associated with Coneygarths for over a hundred and fifty years. Its long connexion appears to have begun with the appointment in 1761 of Cambridge academic John Green as bishop of Lincoln. Although he preferred to live in one of his three London houses rather than Buckden (or anywhere else in his diocese), he was sufficiently attached to the village to make it known that when he died he was to be buried in St Mary’s. Today some people feel that the inscription on his memorial gives an impression of one who was clever and efficient in his duties but did not inspire much affection in local people. If so, he has only himself to blame: he wrote it. As a diocesan property, Coneygarths was at the bishop’s disposal. As you do in such situations, he offered it to a member of his family: his nephew Lieutenant John Green of the 8th Dragoons. Lieutenant Green married Sarah Dixon from Ramsey in Buckden in 1766, so that could well have been the year he moved in to Coneygarths. Their marriage lasted just over nine years, during which time they had at least four children. The birth of the last in October 1778 killed Sarah at the age of thirty-eight. Just over two years later, John Green married again. In the parish register he appears as John Green Esq. This may reflect his new social status as the principal beneficiary of his uncle’s will (the bishop, a bachelor, had died the previous year) rather than indicating that he had retired from the army. 1 His second wife was Margaret Watkins, by whom he had at least two children. The first was Margaret Mary, born in 1783. She may not have been expected to live: she was baptised at home in Coneygarths and not presented in church until nearly two months later. Despite this apparently inauspicious start to life, she lived to be eighty-four. 2 The second child, born in 1789, was John George, whose life was to span most of the nineteenth century. Major Green died in 1793, aged fifty-four, and even after death enjoyed the benefits of having a bishop in the family: he, his youngest son and both his wives (Margaret died in 1834) lie under floor slabs in the nave of St Mary’s, a prominent reminder to those who survived or came after them that in their day they had been people who mattered. The captain John George Green followed his father into the army, joining the 21st (Royal North British Fusiliers) Regiment of Foot at the age of sixteen. Unlike his younger contemporary, John Linton of Stirtloe House, he missed the battle of Waterloo in 1815, but was with his regiment when it occupied Paris the following month. In 1816 he was commissioned into the 6oth Regiment of Foot as a captain; a year or so later he married Frances Susan Urquhart of Aberdeenshire, and in 1819 transferred to the 1st Regiment of Dragoons, with whom he served in Ireland (his daughter, Margaret, was born in Dublin in 1820). He was later posted to Hampshire, where his son, Francis, was born in the summer of 1822. Soon afterwards, John George retired on half-pay and removed his family to Buckden. He had a change of career in mind. In November he was admitted to Jesus College, Cambridge, and began to study for the priesthood. This proved a mistake, and he finally settled to life at Coneygarths, putting his military experience to good use as adjutant of the Hunts Militia. 3 During the rural unrest of 1831, he was called upon to organise a corps of yeomanry to round up the rioters and bring them before the magistrates. (These events were touched on in a community play put on at The Towers in 1990; unfortunately, the demands of casting meant that Captain Green’s part in quelling the uprising had to be ascribed to Colonel Linton. A quick-tempered man, the captain would not have reacted to well to this.) His final years in the militia were not happy ones. By the 1850s he was an old man and keen to resign his post. But his financial position was such that he felt unable to do so unless he could follow the tradition 1 Although he may have done and later re-enlisted. There were enough John Greens in the army at this time to make it difficult to disentangle the military career of any one of them from any other. All that is certain is that he reached the rank of major. 2 She married Dr Maltby, vicar of Buckden and later bishop of Durham—see under Maltby family in the A to Z Section. 3 The county militias, which were under civilian control, were charged with defending the homeland against invasion or internal disturbance while the professional military were overseas (this was also a way of avoiding the need for the country to maintain a large standing army, whose officers might be tempted to mount a coup d’état). By Captain Green’s time they were a volunteer force, whose members continued in their civilian occupations but received regular battle training. They were paid an annual retainer and military pay while on duty.