Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

25 was a decision for its parents, not the state. Parents were the political equals of anyone in the land, now that they had been given the vote. (This would have been news to the mothers of Buckden: women did not have the vote!) The writer, who was H. Rider Haggard, the author of King Solomon’s Mines , and an agricultural reformer, found this opinion ‘ingenious and plausible’; i.e., wrong. See Chapter 13 Education in Buckden , where this topic is dealt with at length. Elima is a word with several meanings: it is a name given to sheepdogs; an Irish travellers’ word for ‘milk’; a variant of the Hebrew Elohim (God), and the Tswa pygmies’ name for the divine force (the Congolese Tswa are Christians, and believe themselves to be descended from the children of Israel). By 1905 it was also the name of the Buckden house occupied by the Rev. Herbert Russell Hurditch (born 1875), minister of the Union (Baptist) Chapel. The son of a Devon saddler, he came from a distinguished evangelical family. His uncle Charles Russell Hurditch founded the Evangelistic Mission and was a renowned preacher who could fill London’s Oxford Music Hall to overflowing, while his cousin Ruth Hurditch, later Mrs R. B. Fisher, (1875-1959) worked as a missionary in Uganda and wrote On the Borders of Pygmy Land – possibly the source for Elima? Although the Buckden chapel was in the High Street it is not clear exactly where Elima itself was, as the name fell out of use. Ellerslie [MapRef 44] was a popular 19thC house name, of which there were at least two examples in Buckden. The first was the home and surgery of W. H. Hillyer, Buckden’s resident doctor during the 1890s. It was a substantial property in Perry Road: a six-bedroomed house with stabling, coach house, gardener’s cottage, ornamental and kitchen gardens, and two tennis courts. It appears in the 1901 census and several Kelly’s directories from 1903 onwards. By 1901, it had become the residence of a retired Madras Army officer, Major Chauncey Curtois (q.v.). On the major’s death in 1905, occupancy passed to Thomas Coxon, draper and deputy mayor of Huntingdon, and then in 1910 briefly to a Cornish farmer called John Gundry. By 1914, the house had been renamed Nutfield, and at some point in the next ten years became the home of the Bowtell family (q.v.), probably in 1920 when it was sold by its owner, Mrs Hall (née Page). The second Ellerslie was a smaller, semi-detached house at 8 High Street, one of whose occupiers was Leonard Sampson Butcher, born in 1893 into a family of Essex tailors and drapers. This background suggests that he may have been one of the departmental managers in Bowtells store. Mr Bowtell liked his staff to live close to the shop. Later it was the home of, first, Mrs Violet Kate Stannard (q.v.) and later Frank Mace, first Life President of Buckden Theatre Club (see under drama in Buckden ). elm, the Buckden. This was once regarded as one of the finest varieties of the smooth-leaved wych elm Ulmus montana vegeta (or possibly Ulmus glabra var.). It was first grown commercially in the mid 18thC, from seed collected in the neighbourhood of Hinchingbrooke and hybridised at the Brampton grounds of nurserymen Wood and Ingram. By 1842 it was particularly common in and around Buckden. A quick-growing tree of ‘peculiar growth and appearance’ it was said to produce excellent timber and to be a desirable ornamental for parks and gardens thanks to its large and ‘cheerful green’ leaves, which it retained into the autumn. Sadly, it is only moderately resistant to Dutch elm disease, and it is unlikely any specimens still grow in Buckden. It is to be found in arboreta all over the world, however, and possibly at Twizzell, Northumbria. Also known – but not in Buckden – as the Huntingdon elm or Chichester elm. See also ash , plane and sycamores. enclosure [or inclosure] award. That for Buckden was made in 1813, but had still not been ratified seven years later. The award is held in the Huntingdonshire Archives, together with its accompanying map; the map appears on the rear endpapers of this book. endowed boys: see e ducation in Buckden . engine shed: see fires and fire-fighting equipment entertainment in Buckden. According to the St. Neots Advertiser in July 1886: ‘What with the feast, a general election and a school treat, this village was pretty lively on Tuesday’. But then the inhabitants of Buckden have always enjoyed being entertained. As far back as 1713, they celebrated in the street when the end of the Wars of the Spanish Succession was proclaimed. In Victorian and Edwardian days the main indoor venues (apart, obviously, from the many licensed premises) were the schoolrooms and the Reading Room in Church Street. Later on came the Rifle Range (particularly popular for dances during the Second World War); St Stephen’s Hall in the grounds of the Towers; the village hall; the Village Club, and, from 1999 the Millennium Community Centre. As well as dances, entertainments included plays, operettas, monologues, recitations, song recitals, musical evenings, parties for the children of the poor, and talks and magic lantern slideshows (some more educational than entertaining). In April 1886, Colonel Marshall of The Towers presided over two ‘popular and pleasing’ evenings of ballads and comic songs interspersed with jokes. They would not be so popular today: the performers were an amateur group calling themselves ‘The Buckden Minstrels’, and were, said the St. Neots Advertiser , ‘faultlessly attired in the costumes affected by the ‘sable brethren’, not by any means omitting the war paint’. Such groups had long been a well- established feature of both amateur and professional theatre: in January 1864, for example, the Saint Ives Private Amateur Elocution Society presented a programme of ‘drawing room entertainment’, which included Ye Ivian Minstrels (‘seven Gentlemen of Colour’) singing ‘refined negro melodies’. They were followed by an extract from Shakespeare’s Othello. Outdoor sites for fêtes, bonfires, fireworks, plays, pageants, athletics meetings, flower shows, political gatherings, gymkhanas, bicycle polo and dancing included land attached to the George (often used for dances) and to the Spread Eagle (where within living memory there was a field large enough to host a circus), and fields belonging to, among others, Mr Looker of Church Street and Mr Mann of Perry Road. In addition, large private grounds and gardens were often thrown open for village events, including those attached to Ivelbury, Coneygarths, Stirtloe House, Buckden Towers and Field House. In the early 1900s Field House, sometimes known as Greenfields, was the residence of E. W. Hunnybun, and ‘Mr Hunnybun’s Lawn’ was a popular venue for an evening of dancing to the Buckden Band. It must have been a large lawn: it had space for 200 guests. It now lies under the houses and gardens of Field Close.