Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

BUCKDEN: A CLOSING MISCELLANY 218 Probably they didn’t; perhaps they should have. They had, after all, been attending the annual supper of the Buckden Brass Band. The Buckden fire engine by Brian Carter S ome years after I established the marina, the village fire engine came up for sale. It was in a somewhat dilapidated hut which also contained a hearse which was nothing more than a trolley with four wheels, and I understood that you hired it for 3s. to wheel your loved one’s coffin to the church. 1 (Offord had a magnificent hearse which had beautifully engraved glass windows.) The shed also contained the old Buckden village street lamps, two of which I purchased as well as the fire engine. This was horse-drawn with bars to the side which would be manned by eight people who raised the poles up and down to actuate the fire pump. At the back of the fire engine was a large tank which would be filled by people rushing around with buckets of water taken from the village pump or their own one if they had one. The hoses were made of leather and included leather buckets and also long rakes to pull the thatch off roofs. It gave great joy to children who would sit on the driver’s seat calling it the Wells Fargo coach. I offered this to Lord Montague of Beaulieu, who declined it, but I later on sold it to a private individual. I was surprised some years later to see it featured in the national press where Lady Montague had driven it through London but had failed to empty the water out of it, making it extremely top heavy and it ended up on its side with the unfortunate pony or horse that was pulling it. Since then I have heard nothing of its whereabouts. BC A poet in exile… O n 27 July 1909, one of the best-known poets and literary critics of the day, John William Watson, 51, met [Adeline] Maureen Pring, an ‘exceedingly pretty’ young Irish woman, 21, at a concert in Bath. A fortnight later he married her. A year later they came to live in Buckden. When the Poet Laureate Alfred Tennyson died in 1892, William Watson (he rarely used his first name) had been the leading contender to succeed him. Unfortunately for Watson, Queen Victoria was in no hurry to fill the post and by the time she made up her mind in late 1895, he had fallen out of favour. His cause may not have been helped by his having once urged one of the Victoria’s sons to tell his mother it was high time she abdicated. Watson’s move to Buckden came at another difficult time in his life: his sudden marriage had not pleased everyone, least of all the three women with whom he was already romantically entangled, one of whom he had promised to marry; his poem savagely satirising the prime minister’s wife and daughter had led to a rift between him and his friend and publisher John Lane, as well as to the cancellation of most of a lucrative American lecture tour; and worst of all, perhaps, he knew that poetic fashion was passing him by. Unsurprisingly, the title of one of the books he wrote while in Buckden was The Muse in Exile . Not that it was an uncomfortable exile: the Watsons occupied a ‘roomy old cottage’ in Silver Street which they called Old Hollies. It had a garden big enough for William to sit and write in while Maureen played with their infant daughter, Rhona. For all William’s public troubles and private fears, the Watsons’ three and a half years in Buckden were as much refuge as exile. Perhaps the Parish Council should erect a plaque to the memory of this distinguished resident, if it can identify Old Hollies. 2 …marooned on an island There is an intriguing entry in the 1938 edition of the United States Library of Congress’s Catalog of Copyright Entries, for the words and melody of an unpublished song called ‘Marooned on an island’; the copyright holder is named as Louisa Gertrude Burrows, of Buckden. Did she go on to have a successful career as a songwriter? The Local History Society would be interested to learn more! Evenings at the Rifle Range by June Woods I t was more than an indoor rifle range. It was also a billiard hall and it had a substantial stage. It was used regularly every day and most evenings except Sundays by the various village organisations. These included the Rifle Club on Wednesdays, the Whist Club, the Youth Club (three evenings a week), the Over-Sixties, and, come the war, the Home Guard. It was also used for school meals, school medicals, and wedding receptions. Local Club Dances were held every Saturday evening and occasionally during the week. The Billiard Club was open most of the time on a casual basis—but for Men Only . Members of the opposite sex were not only banned, they were not even allowed to peek in the door! 1 Look in the A to Z Section under bier, parish for more on the village hearse. 2 It shouldn’t be too hard. There cannot be many cottages in Silver Street with seven bedrooms and four sitting-rooms.