Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

EDUCATION IN BUCKDEN 177 pail. 1 School meals were served for the first time in 1949, but as early as 1929 a large table and twelve chairs had been provided for children who stayed to dinner. Electric light was installed in 1931 (at a cost of £18 6s. 1d.). The improved sanitary arrangements have been noted already. The children’s horizons were widened in many ways. From the 1910s when PT drill was strictly to keep warm and there were no organised games, it was a big step to 1930 when the boys won the County Cup Final—literally a red-letter day as far as the Head was concerned. A lively interest was taken in the activities of the Royal Family, and not only as an excuse for holidays to celebrate numerous royal weddings. In 1906: ‘. . . marched children to High Street to see HM the King go through to Kimbolton. Very good view motor travelling slowly past.’ In 1936: ‘Jan 23 rd . In order that the boys might hear the proclamation of King Edward VIII in London I fitted up my wireless in school. The broadcast came through perfectly. ’ (The school did not get its own wireless until 1948—over 20 years after the BBC first started schools broadcasting.) In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, Buckden School, which is still Church of England controlled, expanded almost—but not quite—out of recognition. There was a setback in 1960 when Longsands Secondary School was opened in St Neots and only 78 pupils were left. Shortly afterwards, however, Buckden was designated a ‘major expansion village’ and in the 1960s the school had to enlarge to keep up with the growth in the population. A new infant school opened in 1966 and a junior school in 1972. These were both part of the existing site, but in 1968 it had looked as though the junior school would be built at the south end of the new housing development that would be Manor Gardens. Parents, teachers and school managers combined to fight the proposal, partly on the grounds of duplication of staff and facilities, and partly for reasons of safety: gravel extraction in the Ouse meadows meant there was an almost constant stream of heavy lorries along Mill Road and Church Street at that time, and families who would have a child at each site were not prepared to risk one or other of them having to go to school unaccompanied (one child had already been killed and others injured). These arguments prevailed, and through compulsory purchase enough land was made available to expand the school on the site it still occupies. A few years later, however, the infants’ section had to be extensively rebuilt after a fire, described here by Mrs June Woods, Buckden’s first woman parish councillor: In November 1978 the school suffered a disastrous fire which gutted the newly built classrooms and caused a great deal of water and smoke damage to the old buildings, although it was interesting to note that the old timbers were not affected to the same degree that the new woodwork suffered. I saw the flames and smoke above the school roof and ran through the pathway beside KnitKnax across the green just as the glass front door blew out—I have never been so frightened in my life—and I will always remember the pathetic scraps of burnt coats and PE bags that were left hanging in the cloakroom when the emergency was over. Tribute must be paid to the outstanding way in which the entire staff including ancillary staff reacted in such a frightening emergency. Children were evacuated to various places of safety very quickly (those in the Falcon seemed to quite enjoy themselves!) and from there to their homes. Parents very kindly took in neighbours’ children whose mothers were working—generally speaking there was no panic... Due to the efforts of everyone concerned, and the many offers of books, furniture and assistance the school was back in business within seven days, and by the first anniversary of the fire in 1979 the buildings were fully restored and once more open to the public. The children wrote some excellent accounts of these events which were displayed in Huntingdon Library, the different views expressed made very interesting reading—and the handwriting was a joy to behold. Not everyone seems to have noticed the day’s excitement, however: on her way home the exhausted headmistress dropped in to a shop not a hundred yards from the school to buy something for supper: ‘I expected a stream of questions about what had happened and why and was everyone all right...instead there was not a word. It was as if all the noise, smoke, vehicles, alarms and the unusual comings and goings of children and adults had never happened!’ The twenty-first century Well over a hundred years old and enlarged in four main phases as the village grew, Buckden school now has over three hundred children on the roll. In the main, they come from the catchment villages of Buckden, Stirtloe, Southoe and Diddington, but there is a significant number from Huntingdon and the surrounding villages. From having had only small playgrounds and no playing field at all for most of its existence, the school now has extensive grounds including a large field, three playground areas and a play fort. The field has mature trees, a football pitch, an environmental area, a wildlife area and a living willow relaxation structure. Indoors, there are ten permanent class areas—both closed-classroom and open-plan— 1 The straws are confirmed by The Times Tuesday October 2 1934: ‘one-third pint bottles of milk, with straws’; they were, however, useless when the milk froze in winter! (Editor, pers. ob.)