Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

BUCKDEN: A CLOSING MISCELLANY 216 There was a Buckden Brass Band who played at the Fetes and Garden Parties. The dances were held on the lawns at Stirtloe House and Beech Lawn. The Bill Heads advertising the event always added ‘if wet in the Rifle Range’, a saying still used today by the older villagers. Buckden Band all had uniforms and always played at the Lion Hotel on ‘First Sunday’, the second Sunday in July. My sister, to this day, says the only tune I played was ‘Lead Kindly Light’. Buckden was mainly agricultural and as a boy I remember there was a lot of unemployment. One other employer was the stocking factory which is now a playschool in Mill Road. It must have employed about 20 to 30 people, women and men. They came from the Offords, Southoe and Great Staughton. They made pullovers on machines they pushed by hand. At the back of the factory was a lawn and they had a good tennis club for the workforce. Harvest time was a great time for us boys as we used to earn a few pennies driving carts bringing the corn from the field to the Stack Yard. The corn was cut by ‘Binder’ which tied the corn into sheaves. The Binder would be pulled by three horses. When the sheaves were dry then they would be loaded on carts and taken to the Stack Yard. The yard where I worked is now called The Barns. The yard would have about a dozen stacks by the end of the harvest. After the stack had settled down they would be thatched to keep the wet out. After about a month or so the Threshing Tackle would come and thresh the corn from the straw one stack at a time. Then the Tackle would move on to another farm. Threshing was a dirty dusty job on a par with coal mining but remember, the farm worker had no shower or bath room to get clean. I don’t know how they managed it. I’ve said how unemployment was bad. I can remember men asking where the next threshing was so that they could get a few days work as the farmer always had to have a few extra hands at this time. My Dad was the farm’s Horse Keeper and as was expected when I left school at fourteen, I went to work there. Dad had about seven horses to look after as well as two Hunters. I left school at Easter and at the end of my first harvest I was going to plough with two horses (was it cheap labour). My Dad was in the same field with four horses and loved the work. At approximately 9.30 a.m. we would stop for half an hour for our Dockie. First we’d throw a corn sack over the horses to keep them from getting cold. We would sit on the bank of the hedgerow. Remember those Cottage loaves with a large bottom and a small top? Mum would cut the small top in half, make a hole in the top and slap a knob of butter on, and give us two thick slices of meat. This we would hold down with a piece of crust, take a knife from our pocket and eat. We would finish this with a piece of home-made cake and wash it down with cold tea—no sugar or milk. What had we used the knife for before? Did we wash our hands? (Where?). No matter what the weather was like while the ground would work we stayed out, sometimes wet through. The horses would always go home faster than they came out. In the stable Dad would mix the food up while we took the harness off and rubbed the horses down to dry them off as best we could. You always looked after the horses first. Home for dinner—my Mum’s suet pudding. She would get the biggest basin she had, line it with the pudding mix, and fill it with meat and vegetables and gravy (made with Burdalls Gravy Salt I suspect). She put a top on it, covered it with muslin and cooked it in a saucepan. Another day we would perhaps have suet dumplings. My work on the farm only lasted to my second harvest and then I was pulled off because of some medical condition. I next went to work up at the shop, Bowtells of Buckden. I must tell you a little about our shops. The tins of beans and soups weren’t price marked and you didn’t get a basket and help yourself. You would tell the assistant behind the counter your requirements and he would get it. Our tills didn’t issue you with a ticket telling you what you had bought. Shops didn’t have fridges. The cheese was kept at the back of the counter on a marble slab and covered with muslin. It was cut as you wanted it. Bacon didn’t come in shrink wrap and when you fried it didn’t have that horrible white stuff come out of it. It was cut on a bacon machine sliced to the thickness you wanted it with as many slices as asked for. The sides of bacon (Harris of Wiltshire English) came by rail and were hung in the bacon wire safe in the warehouse. Everything came in bulk- currants, sugar, flour, butter and lard and had to be weighed up. The goods were bought from the manufacturers direct. Then came the supermarkets and the manufacturers upped the number of items to be delivered and this stopped most of the direct deliveries. The shops then had to go to the wholesalers who, of course, upped the price and this meant the end of many small shops. Bowtells continued to thrive selling everything- groceries, ladies fashion, gents outfitting, boots and shoes and eventually furniture. The shop was eventually modernised and the size of the grocery department doubled and the rest let. The bacon still was sliced in the shop and they cooked their own ham. Now, let me tell you, when I want good bacon (no white stuff) I go to a small butchers in March. It’s cut in the shop how you want and the sausages are out of this world. The A1 still came past the front door and then came the By- Pass and the new estates started. Some built on fields that were flooded half the year. The rest you know. I didn’t like these new-estates that were growing on our green fields, admittedly the extra people added