Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

LIVING OFF THE LAND 152 Park Farm—an Oliver tractor and baler Peter Mailer Cereal crops required a great of labour, and harvest–time photographs show gangs of a dozen or more men and boys building a stack. Now a single enormous combine and a tractor and trailer can cut a field in a few hours, eliminating or combining the separate operations of stooking, drying, carting, stack-building, and threshing. In the 1930s, the horse began to be replaced by the Fordson tractor, designed in America but built in England and Ireland. The inexorable advance of mechanisation was accelerated by the arrival of superior US-built machines such as the Oliver (the Fordson was known for its cantankerous nature). A hundred years ago, agriculture was a major source of employment in the parish. Historian Peter Ibbett’s search of the 1881 census, for example, shows that the farmers employed 69 men, 37 boys and two women (later censuses do not include such summaries, unfortunately). Now the arable farms that surround Buckden have fewer than half-a-dozen permanent employees. Fruit Until 1970, the growing of fruit was big business in Buckden. Frederick Brown alone had 3000 gooseberry bushes off Perry Road. The produce from these was sold to Batchelors in Manchester, sent there by rail until that service was stopped in 1959. Thereafter Paynes of Wyboston delivered the fruit to Covent Garden by road. Local domestic orders were supplied until the turn of the twenty-first century. The Browns also had 250 apple and plum trees, the fruit from which was sent to Leicester market. On a different scale, Buckden resident Eric Newman used to pick wild blackberries at a penny or a penny-halfpenny a pound as a boy to pay for new football boots at 12/6d (£0.63) a pair. The fruit was bought by Mrs Cope of Hunts End, who despatched it to James Robertson and Sons Ltd of Droylsden , for the manufacture of their famous Bramble Jelly. Pigs and Poultry Until the advent of intensive pig-rearing, there were numerous small holdings around the village where pigs and poultry were raised. The Cope family at Hunts End used to fatten pigs for market, having perhaps six dozen at a time in six successive stages of fattening. Two were kept as pets outside the pens for a time but they too had to go to market when mature enough—a sad occasion. The Copes also kept chickens and sold eggs at the rate of 120-150 dozen per week. The proceeds from these sales went towards their transport business, which was to specialise in moving cattle. As competition from factory farmers led to the pig business being phased out, the number of lorries rose from an initial two to six. This change worked well, since the drivers’ return times varied so much that they could not be relied upon to be on hand to feed the pigs on time. The Bowyer family kept about a hundred pigs, one half of them at Margetts Farm and the others at Jessamine House on the High Street. For a description of the activities of the one-time Pig-and-Poultry Club see under Pepper, Percy. Eric Newman farmed in Lucks Lane after returning from his service as Buckden’s only Bevin Boy in the Second World War. He dismantled seven or eight redundant Nissen huts on an airfield or at the wartime Diddington hospital and re-erected them in a field bought from the Cranfield-Rose family. These were used to shelter his herd of Wessex Saddlebacks. He also kept 400 chickens, but these were in an expensive patent hen house. Frederick Brown kept 50-60 pigs and 500 hens to the west of the village, but this aspect of his business was ended when the land was taken by the advent of the Buckden by-pass (q.v.). Osiers (Willow - salix viminalis ) & Basket-making Making baskets from osiers which he had grown and processed himself was turned into a highly successful enterprise by Richard Brown, Frederick Brown's great-grandfather. The son of a watchmaker, Richard was born in 1828. In due course he was apprenticed to a basket-maker. After completing his time, he worked in Cambridge (walking there and back) before buying an osier bed in Offord and starting his business in Buckden as a basket-maker. Later he added the osier beds in Lucks Lane and Mill Road. The willows were coppiced annually to produce the wands required for basket-making. The wands were harvested in February using sickles and then retted (softened) in a water-filled pit beside Lucks Lane which was fed by the spring there. In May the wands were bundled and transported to the ‘rod yard’ at the