Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

FRIENDLY INVASIONS 194 R and R Alan Cockburn: ‘The school was fortunate in having access to plenty of ground with short grass where we could play games. The Vineyards, a field beyond Monks Cottages, had one reasonably flat area suitable for a football pitch. Goal posts were erected, and in the lighter evenings the pitch became a favoured meeting place for anyone keen for a kickabout. Crowds of Tollington boys from the sixth form downwards, village boys and young men, numbering twenty or more on each side, would surge to and fro in friendly rivalry, owing allegiance only to the ephemeral team one happened to join for the occasion.’ (Petrol shortages meant that formal matches could only rarely be played against other schools.) ‘The Marathon, our rather grandly named annual cross country race, took place in the spring term over three and a bit miles down the road from Monks Cottages to Offord Mill Bridge, then south through fields to a track leading to Stirtloe and thence to the finish in the Vineyards.’ The evacuees also enjoyed winter sports, such as tobogganing, snowballing, ice-hockey (known as the ‘free fight on the ice’) and in 1940 a whole month of skating on the lakes in The Towers and the Valley. In the summer there was athletics, climaxing with an annual sports day held at The Towers during Feast Week, and twice a week there was cricket on the Buckden pitch in Lucks Lane (‘the finest in Huntingdonshire’, according to the late Maurice Milner)—until it was set aside for hay, after which matches moved to Squire Thornhill’s Diddington ground. David Rhodes remembers that for practice sessions there were nets and a matting wicket at The Towers: ‘the cowslip-bespangled ridges and hollows of this pitch were rather a contrast to the smooth turf of our field in London, “mais c’est la guerre”.’ What with team sports, swimming in the Ouse, cycling round the countryside, a makeshift gymnasium in the Rifle Range and, for some, a weekly cup of senna tea, the boys had no excuse for not keeping fit and regular. But there was another form of exercise available, too, one which was good for them and the nation, one for which they were even paid. To be a farmer’s boy David Rhodes realised that from the local farmers’ point of view, Tollington was quite useful: ‘We helped gather in the harvest . Labour was scarce, since many agricultural workers had been called up, and there was more work than ever to do. We began almost as soon as we came down here by picking beans (the money for which was rather a long time in arriving) but the real work began in the following June. Until then I believe that most of us had not realised that the peas we ate in London grew in long lines in fields, but we soon found that out. Although we picked extremely slowly at first and were amazed the speed of the local women, we soon grew more proficient in this art and by the second year most of us were old hands. ‘The corn was cut in August and, although a good number of us went home for the full seven weeks, many stayed behind for at least part of the time to give the farmers a hand. If we ever became countrified, this was the time. Wielding pitchforks on the tops of swaying stacks, using the most atrocious language, wading through liquid dung, careering about the country in tractors (when they decided to start)—our own mothers wouldn’t have recognised us. Ah! Those were the days, when we were able to sit in Geering’s(café) with our pockets overflowing with money and lose a shilling without noticing it. 1 ‘We were doing a valuable job of work, perhaps more valuable than we thought at the time. Even as it was, crops had to lie rotting in the fields because there was no one to cut them and carry them in. But not only were we serving the national interest, we were serving ourselves as well. Farm-work certainly did none of us any harm and did most of us much good. Furthermore a period of physical labour between two periods of mental labour was most refreshing.’ William Medhurst: ‘A number of fifth and sixth form boys were introduced to that sturdy old machine, the Fordson tractor. We had lessons on driving and maintenance on the road side grass in Lucks Lane and when considered proficient enough were made available to local farmers for harvest work, though we were not much good at ploughing.’ Some Buckden people One of the pleasures of the Tollington reminiscences is the numerous glimpses they give us of the people of Buckden. Alan Cockburn, in particular, has left a vivid and affectionate portrait of life with the Smith family, unfortunately too long to quote in full: ‘John and Kate’s cheery and energetic widowed daughter, Peggy Rogers, lived with them. She had single-handedly cultivated a half-acre of potatoes in the 1914-18 war, and now kept a poultry farm. Their eldest son, Martin, had served as an officer on the Western Front, and now farmed between Buckden and 1 Poker, again? Geering’s was a sweet shop and café, next door to Sherwood House.