Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

MEDIEVAL BUCKDEN: THREE GLIMPSES 214 There is one other piece of evidence which suggests that the workforce in the village was depleted at that time. The bishop of Lincoln of the time, Henry Burghersh, had the king’s permission to enclose 200 acres of land to make a deer park. This was farm land, and no doubt the tenants who had not died had the spare strips in the rest of Buckden to compensate them for the loss. The land was eventually returned to agricultural use, but the time is still remembered by the name of Park Farm. For more information on the deer park , see entry in the A to Z Section . Population The difference between the figures shows that the population was probably not very stable, but when we have lists like these it is tempting to try to extrapolate population figures from them. To do this we have to assume that we can take each tax payer to be the head of a household, and multiply by a figure which represents the average household size. Historians disagree on what this variable should be, but it was probably somewhere between four and five. Taking the average of the two lists, sixty, this means a population figure of 240 to 300. However, this is probably an underestimate, and a more accurate figure cannot be found without knowing what proportion of householders were too poor to pay taxes. It was all to change anyway, after the arrival of the Black Death less than a generation later in 1348.