Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

GARDENING IN BUCKDEN 159 and 1970s, which meant many people were out of the village during July, holidaying by the sea or abroad or simply taking the family out for the day in the car they could now afford. In 1979, therefore, it was decided to combine the Summer Show with the Dahlia and Chrysanthemum Show. The side-shows and other entertainments had already been abandoned two years before, a real break with tradition. They were replaced by the Donkey Derby held at The Towers and the Village Hall Trust’s Feast Week Saturday entertainments. The Summer Show is now held on a Saturday at the beginning of September, when the main holiday is over. Other events The association had held discussion meetings since 1952 and probably before that, but it was only in the 1980s that it started a programme of regular monthly meetings. In the winter these usually take the form of a speaker on a topic, often illustrated with slides or video, while summer is the time for nursery or garden visits. Members have visited many of the well-known gardens in the Home Counties and the Midlands. Surprisingly, the greatest distances were travelled before the motorways were built. There is also always a seasonal social gathering at Christmas. In 1968, after ten years on the waiting list, Buckden was the venue for the BBC’s Gardeners Question Time. And the winner is… For many years there was only one true trophy, the Association Cup. Other section winners received a medal and a trophy donated by one or other of the gardening or homecraft magazines. Today there is a fine array of cups, shields and other trophies, some donated by members, others purchased by the committee. These are listed in the Appendix. The future The future of the Gardeners Association looks bright. At the time of writing, there is a waiting list for the parish allotments (allotment holders are often among the most active of the members), and current concerns about climate change and the personal and global benefits of sourcing food locally mean that parents often take up gardening at the urging of their children—who will hopefully be the association members of the future. Allotments During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the population of England increased rapidly in the new or expanding industrial centres. Unlike their rural forebears, these townspeople had neither the time nor the space in which to grow food, either for themselves or to sell. They were necessarily dependent on the daily import of meat, vegetables and other produce from the surrounding countryside. But their demands could not be met by the existing systems of agriculture: small holdings often made up of small parcels of land scattered throughout a parish; the strip-farming of large open fields; the grazing rights that gave people access to common land. Hence the enclosure movement, that sought to raise agricultural productivity by restricting common rights and consolidating disparate small landholdings into fewer large farms. Economies of scale now made it worthwhile for their new owners to invest in such improvements as hedging, ditching, drainage and, increasingly, mechanisation. The Acts that implemented the enclosure changes made some provision to compensate those whom the new order had dispossessed, but it was not enough. Reformers argued that some reallocation of land was essential to save the families of labourers and small yeoman farmers from unemployment and poverty - starvation, even. But when their proposals were finally taken up, well into the nineteenth century, it was not social conscience but fear that moved the ruling class: fear induced by the intermittent revolutions shaking continental Europe and at home the increasing rural unrest epitomised by the ‘Swing’ riots of 1830-21 (see machine-breaking in the A to Z Section). By the mid-1830s, almost half of all parishes had allotment schemes; at about this time, the Buckden parish authorities invited the deserving poor to apply for allotments ‘in the gravel pits’ (probably off Mill Road). A succession of acts sought to ensure that no new enclosures were authorised unless land was set aside as allotments for the labouring population. In 1890 this responsibility was imposed on the county councils—which after 1894 led to disputes between them and some of the new parish councils (including Buckden’s). As a result, the Small Holdings and Allotments Act 1908 shifted the responsibility down to parish, urban district and borough councils, requiring them to meet their residents’ demands for allotments. The Land Settlement Facilities Act 1919 was introduced to assist returning servicemen, and opened up allotments to all, including women, not just ‘the labouring population’. It empowered parish councils to acquire land by agreement with local landowners or tenants or, with county council agreement, to buy land, or as a last resort to ask their county council to exercise its compulsory purchase powers. In Buckden the