Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

9 anniversary brochure listed its many departments with justifiable pride: Grocery and Provisions; China, Glass and Earthenware; Ironmongery; General Drapery; Ladies’ and Children’s Outfitting; Gents’ Outfitting; Footwear; Linoleum and Carpets; Furniture Mr Bowtell lived at Nutfield, Perry Road, a large house which, as Ellerslie, had previously been the home of, among others, Dr Hillyer. Mr Bowtell liked his staff also to live ‘near the shop’ and houses were made available for departmental managers and others. A Methodist, Mr Bowtell was a ‘passive resister’, that is to say someone who refused on principle to pay their rates towards the upkeep of church schools; for this he, like many respectable people, was fined. Brandreth, Thomas Shaw, MA FRS (1788-1873) was a pupil of Dr Maltby (q.v.). He grew up to be a mathematician, inventor, classical scholar and barrister. A close friend of the engineer George Stephenson, he played a prominent part in the development of the Manchester & Liverpool Railway. Later in life he took a lively interest in the affairs of Worthing, especially its drainage. Brass Band, Buckden. It’s a fine summer evening in Buckden in June 1904. You and your loved one are discussing how to spend it: a stroll down Cemetery Road and across the fields to Diddington? Or down Mill Road to watch the bathers in the Ouse (a bit risqué that, perhaps)? A sudden burst of music reminds you that there is a more interesting alternative. The local paper has reported that the Buckden Band ‘now play for dancing on Wednesday and Friday evenings in Mr Brown’s paddock at the back of the George Hotel. As only 2d is charged, which includes instruction in dancing, the attendance has been good.’ The band was reputed to be one of the largest village bands in the country. The most authoritative account to date can be found in Appendix no. 2 of ‘Bands in St Neots and District’ by David Bushby published in 1997. Entries in the Hunts Post for 1922, record that the band was in abeyance in June of that year but in July it was revived by Mr W. Hodson sufficiently to play sacred music in the High Street on a Sunday evening. The band is often referred to during the following year as providing entertainment in the village – as it had done throughout its history, leading processions mounted on a wagon, and playing at special celebrations (such as the Nelson Centenary and the end of the Boer War), shows, fetes and sports days. There had always been rival bands and other makers of music. Initially these had been other brass bands, such as the Hunts Militia Band, which occasionally played in Buckden. After the First World War the challenge came from new directions: the exotic, like Madame de Siro’s Hawaiian Orchestra, and the modern, like the County Syncopated Dance Orchestra. See under Edleston for a note about an unusual event at which the band played. Brickyard Lane was the name used in the 1891 census for what in previous censuses had been an unnamed alley off the High Street, which subsequently became York Yard (q.v). The only known brick and tile pits in Buckden were to the west of what is now the A1. The 1926 Ordnance Survey map shows what appears to be a large excavated area almost due west of, and possibly accessible from, the lane, but it is not clear whether the two are connected. According to the late Maurice Milner, it was also known as Brickle – a local abbreviation of ‘brick kiln’ . Bridge House, Church Street [MapRef 10] is believed to be the oldest surviving building in Buckden. The house was built in 1458 and when first completed was an open medieval hall and a building of high status . It takes its name from the humpback bridge that used to carry Church Street across a stream directly to the west of the main building. The house has been painstakingly restored by Mr Christopher Bates, wherever possible using materials and techniques sympathetic to the building. For his own story of the problems and pleasures involved in returning a historic house to its former glory. See Chapter 6: Bridge House, Church Street . Brightman, Mr [Walter] Harry: see accidents, shooting. Brown, Lancelot (1748–1802) was a barrister and MP whose hopes of augmenting his pension were thwarted by the clergy of Buckden. Known as ‘Lance’ or ‘Capey’ to distinguish him from his famous father, the landscape gardener Lancelot ‘Capability’Brown, he was the tenant of Stirtloe House for several years at the turn of the 19thC. In 1784 he became one of the two ‘borough’ MPs for Huntingdon Town. He resigned in 1787 but in 1792 was asked to take over one of the two ‘county’ seats representing Huntingdonshire. Viscount Hinchingbrooke, the seat’s previous occupant, had been obliged to resign when he succeeded his father as the Earl of Sandwich. He asked Lancelot Brown to keep the seat warm for a year or two until the new Viscount Hinchingbrooke was of an age to bring it back into the family; in return, he would secure Brown a Crown post (i.e., an undemanding government job with a good pension). Brown agreed, was elected unopposed, and kept his side of the bargain by resigning in 1794. Six years later he was still ‘violently enraged’ that no Crown post had yet come his way. Lord Sandwich’s friends claimed that he had made every effort but had been constantly thwarted by his political enemies – who included the Bishop of Lincoln and the Vicar of Buckden! Lancelot Brown died in 1802 (‘carried off on Sunday morning last, after lying ill about a month’). He left no children, and the tenancy of Stirtloe House seems to have passed to Lawrence Reynolds (see under Reynolds ). Brown, Richard was a Buckden resident whose obituary reported that he had had an idea ‘ to which, possibly, few other people have given thought, viz., that Buckden is situated in the crater of an extinct volcano.’ Mr Brown's The Buckden Band. Date and location unknown Gale family collection