Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

26 The Lion should have been at a disadvantage when it came to offering outdoor entertainment: it had no gardens. But successive landlords got round this by using the High Street instead – as for example on 2 June 1902, when Buckden’s celebrations of the end of the Boer War climaxed with the village band playing for dancing in the street outside the Lion (see also under balls ). Another popular entertainment was the spontaneous punch-up. A typical example, witnessed by between 80 and 100 excited spectators, was a fight that started late on Boxing Day 1904 in the George. It began when the acting manager told the hotel ostler, James Collins, to eject a drunken Diddington farm-worker. A row ensued. Words and furniture flew back and forth. A Mr House from Brampton chose this moment to come in for some refreshment. Seeing a lamp in danger of being knocked over, he cried out ‘Steady, you’ll have the place afire!’ and was promptly knocked onto all-fours by two blows behind the ear from Collins, whose shout of ‘I’ve owed you that for some time!’ indicated that he had recognised House as the witness whose evidence had earned Collins his recently completed prison sentence (for being drunk and disorderly). Pc Hodson, arriving to restore order, was nearly knocked over when Collins, House, Collins’s mother (Mrs Mills) and another man tumbled out of the hotel door. House started to complain to Pc Hodson, whereupon Collins punched him in the head again and Collins’s mother started to scratch his face. Hodson tried to prevent House retaliating, which only allowed Collins to hit him yet again. They all fell on to the ground fighting, Mrs Mills ‘shrieking and using bad language’. Peace finally prevailed, and the spectators melted away into the night, having had a thoroughly entertaining time. The subsequent court case ended with Collins being fined 15s. and his mother 10s. (the magistrates rejected the acting manager’s claim that it was really Mr House who was the offending party). Mr Murray, landlord of the George, paid Collins’s fine for him, saying he was a good worker and trying hard to reform. The man from Diddington, who had taken no part in the main bout, was fined 7s. 6d. Mr House left court bemoaning the half- crown he had dropped when first hit: ‘I never saw it again.’ ‘Girl-on-girl action’ – fights and swearing matches between women (usually neighbours) – was even more popular, particularly if some foolish male tried to intervene. See also Band, Buckden Brass . excursions by charabanc and later motor-coach have been a feature of village life for nearly a century. Some took, and still take, the form of visits by groups or societies to appropriate locations – gardens, theatres, markets, places of historic interest. Others, such as Sunday School treats, were outings to the seaside, although there was one annual Combined Sunday Schools outing at the turn of the 19thC which wasn’t all that exciting for the children of Buckden – it took place in The Towers. It was exciting for the adults of Buckden, however, many of whomwould have been among the 1,200-1,300 people who danced the evening away in the park in the glow of paper lanterns. Usually all went well with the excursions, although Mrs Billee Lumbers remembers one year when the Sunday schoolchildren were marched off to catch a train at Offord & Buckden station, only to be turned back because Mill Road was flooded. A truly disastrous outing was reported by the Hunts Post in July 1923: A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS A party of juveniles and adults from Buckden, who went to Hunstanton for a motor excursion last week, had a most eventful outing. The day was enjoyed at the seaside, but troubles commenced on the return homewards… …..when someone noticed that one boy had been left behind. The drivers stopped and got out to discuss what to do. A little boy also got out, to pick some heather for his mother, and was promptly run over by a passing car which broke his leg. He was rushed to Norwich Hospital in one charabanc while the other returned to Hunstanton, where the forgotten lad was found and bundled aboard. Unfortunately, when the driver started the engine for the homeward journey it burst into flames… . explosion. On the morning of Monday, 7 March 1887, Mr Priestley, co-proprietor of Messrs Bowyer & Priestley’s steam-roller flour mills, had just walked past the engine- house when it blew up, taking the end wall of the main building with it. Debris flew six or seven hundred yards, partially destroying two nearby houses en route. Miraculously, neither Mr Priestley nor any of the thirty men in the mill suffered injury. F Falcon public house. Buckden has had at least two pubs of this name. The earliest (also known as the Old Falcon) was in the High Street, just to the north of the Spread Eagle . It was sold in about 1840 and within a year or two had been de-licensed and converted into a shop and cottages. These were demolished in the 1960s to make way for the houses that are now 87-91 High Street, but they can be clearly seen in a late 19thC photograph in the Francis Frith collection The Falcon name was transferred to premises in Mill Road, just to the east of Hunts End. Some 150 years later, in October 1995, it was closed by its then owners, Bedford brewers Charles Wells, and is now a private house, Crown Cottage. Falcon Way is one of the short, bird-related streets leading off Vineyard Way. The name may have been suggested by the nearby Falcon public house in Mill Road (see previous entry). The Falcon P.H. Mill Road c 1960 Angela Bruce Collection