Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

23 Lawn’. In fact, it belonged to the farm next door, which was occupied at one time by Benjamin Faulkner. In 1834 he accused four villagers of stealing a number of birds out of the dovecote. William Reason and William Burton were labourers and Robert Holmes and John Smith alehouse keepers; this suggests that a traditional rural back-of-the- pub delivery chain had been established. The outcome of the case has not been traced but the 1841 census shows that John Smith at least was still keeping an alehouse (the George Tap), while Robert Holmes had become a farmer. However, he appears to be living in the Silver Street building later known as the White Horse beer-house; certainly his son George Holmes became an alehouse keeper (and ended up in the county gaol in 1851). An idea of what these dovecotes may have looked like can be gained from the one still standing at Boughton Grange Farm south of Diddington. A 1535 survey of the manor of Buckden mentions a dovecote, which may have been an earlier version of one of the two already mentioned. A dovecote also formed part of the amenities of Stirtloe House (as did a slaughterhouse). drama in Buckden. The plays and other distractions put on in Buckden Palace for bishops and their entourages hardly count as village entertainments, and although the antiquity of Buckden’s inns, and their location on one of the country’s main highways, may have made them occasional venues for travelling actors, we have no evidence of it. But we do know that as the 19thC progressed, the schoolrooms were used not only for educational and religious entertainments but also for plays (see, for example, under Wyles ). When the Church Street Reading Rooms opened in 1891, they, too, became the venue for enthusiastic amateur performances of one-act plays, recitations, songs and on at least one occasion a Gilbert and Sullivan opera – an ambitious production of HMS Pinafore by the choral society. Those taking part were usually members of the more genteel end of Buckden society. So were the audience, apart from an unwanted hard core of loud persons who stood at the back and were regarded as being unable through drink or ignorance to properly appreciate the entertainment on offer. The South African and First World Wars saw regular evenings devoted to mocking the enemy and raising funds for the soldiers. The Reading Room gave way to the Rifle Range where Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and plays were performed. After some years of neglect, the Theatre Club was revived in the 1970s to take advantage of the new village hall, with a formal constitution being drawn up in 1979. The first chairman was David Thomas; Frank Mace, a stalwart of earlier productions, agreed to be Life President. The club aimed to put on at least two productions a year; these included pantomimes and musical evenings as well as straight plays. Bespoke facilities including a large scene store were incorporated in the Millennium Centre, opened in 1999; unfortunately falling membership and shrinking audiences meant that the club gave its last performance (to date) in May 2006. Appropriately enough it was an evening celebrating village life, linked by readings from ‘Buckden: a Christmas Ballad.’ by Archdeacon Knowles (q.v.). In recent years the Towers has also provided a venue for drama, including professional performances of Shakespeare, Goldsmith and Gogol in the knot garden, and in the courtyard amateur Shakespeare ( A Midsummer Night’s Dream ) and a large-scale community play put on by the Theatre Club itself. Dudley, [Mary] Edna ( née Healey) was born on 21 May 1927 in French Park, Co. Roscommon, Eire, the second daughter of farming parents. When she reached 17, lack of work made Edna decide to travel to England. She had friends in Cambridge, and this was where she initially found work. She met her future husband, Albert Dudley, when she moved to Buckden, where she was employed at the Lion Hotel and then at the George. They were married on 6 September 1952 at St Joseph’s, the Catholic Church in St Neots to which Edna often walked on a Sunday to hear Mass. Edna became actively involved in village life, and played her part in the 1954 May Day celebrations. The Rifle Range Whist Drives and the Over Sixties were where Edna discovered her organisational skills. In 1954 she and Albert had a daughter Linda, followed the following July by a second daughter, Hazel. There was a very small collection of Catholics at this time, Edna, Mr Frank Mace and Mrs Grey. When the Claretians moved to Buckden, Edna began fund raising in earnest; whist drives, dances, jumble sales, barbecues and the popular annual fete, all accompanied by a raffle. It was not only the Claretians that benefited from her fund-raising skills: so did the Royal British Legion, and the Tennis Club, where Edna was a regular on a Sunday afternoon, not playing but organising the teas. Durst, John (fl.-1789) was an early Buckden schoolmaster. He seems to have lived both in Stirtloe and in Mill End, Buckden. E early closing day for Buckden shops was traditionally Wednesday. earthquake, Buckden hit by small. Shortly before 1.00 a.m. BST on Monday 23 September 2002, several parts of Britain including Buckden were shaken by an earthquake. Measuring between 4.8 and 5.0 on the Richter scale it had its epicentre at Dudley in the West Midlands. Although no reports of serious damage were received, it was forceful enough to make the yard gates of the Spread Eagle crash together so loudly the landlord thought the pub had been hit by ram-raiders. Other residents reported feeling and hearing a ‘rushing wave’ pass underneath their “The Yeomen of the Guard” performed in the Rifle Range in 1937. Alice Whitmee