Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

28 fires and fire-fighting equipment: The Mischiefs from Fire Act of 1707 required that each parish should provide a means of fighting fires. (It also authorized payments of up to 30 shillings for the operators of the first three parish pumps to reach a fire, but this was probably implemented only in large cities – and sounds like an incitement to arson.) To this end the parish church purchased a fire pump and erected a building for it in the north-east corner of the churchyard. The brick floor and foundations are still present but below ground level. Unfortunately, the pump could not always be produced when needed. According to The Annual Register for 1770: ‘This morning [March 6] between ten and eleven o’clock, a most dreadful fire happened at Sturtley [i.e., Stirtloe], half a mile from Bugden in Huntingdonshire. In less than an hour, three capital farm houses, with their out-houses, stacks of corn, &c. were intirely consumed. The fire was raging at the same time in distant parts of the place. There was a great want of water, and no fire engine nearer than St Neots (four miles), and before it could arrive the whole of that beautiful village, with granaries, stacks, barns &c. was reduced to ashes.’ As ever, it was the poor what got the blame: ‘This dreadful catastrophe was occasioned by the carelessness of a servant girl heating the oven.’ (An alternative version places the fire in 1790 and ascribes it to ‘malcontents’ – a reflection of contemporary fears of a radical uprising inspired by the French Revolution.) It seems that the Huntingdon engine finally managed to reach the village: the archives of the Borough Council record a payment of 5s. to a William Beard for his attendance at Stirtloe on the day of the fire; the payment document confirms that he was connected with the fire engine. Another Stirtloe fire, this one a mercifully rare case of arson, occurred in the early hours of 28 December 1863. John Barton, son of Buckden miller Richard Barton and described at his trial as ‘a young man in a respectable position in life’, ‘unlawfully, maliciously and feloniously’ set fire to farm buildings and corn stacks in the possession of Thomas Topham. The buildings belonged to the unlucky Mr Topham’s landlords, Messrs Thornhill and Duberly, two local magistrates against whom John Barton was known to hold a grudge. The fire burned for two days; the resultant damage was estimated at £1,500-£1,600. Despite a stranger having been seen in the vicinity at about the time of the fire, the jury took only a few minutes to find John Barton guilty; they were possibly swayed by both his father and brother giving evidence for the prosecution; by his own admission to a policeman’s wife that he regretted having done it, and by Superintendent Copping’s virtuoso demonstration of the footprint evidence. Barton was sentenced to twelve years’ penal servitude and was transported on the Vimiera to Western Australia, where he died of fever only four years later. In the early hours of 24 January 1898, the village fire brigade was unable to prevent two of ‘the most picturesque specimens of old timber and thatch buildings in the county’ burning down. Henry Mann, cowkeeper and dairyman, owned them both and lived in one of them. Fortunately he had fire insurance. This fire followed closely on one at the George just before Christmas 1897. A servant was woken early one morning by the sound of the ceiling in the room next door crashing to the floor. It had been set alight by flames spreading from an ‘oddly-constructed chimney’. Fortunately the parish engine was soon on the spot and little damage was done. But there was a sequel. The George’s insurers, the Royal Exchange, refused to pay the one guinea attendance fee. The Parish Council indignantly instructed its clerk to point out that the fee represented only a small part of the cost of maintaining the engine and that other companies had paid it ‘without demur’. He was also instructed to find out whether the Council actually owned the fire-engine and was therefore responsible for insuring it and the engine-house against…fire. Just over a century earlier, in October 1788, another servant had been awoken by a fire in the George. Staggering through the choking smoke, he was horrified to be met with ‘a most shocking spectacle’: his master, Thomas Bartlett, was lying in flames in front of the bedroom grate – indeed, almost under it – his shirt and waistcoat already reduced to ashes. The servant’s intervention saved the unfortunate man from being ‘absolutely roasted’, but could not save his life: despite attendance by the best of local medical assistance, Mr Bartlett expired within a few hours. At the ‘inquisition’ held next day, the jury brought in a verdict of accidental death after hearing that the deceased had been in a state of almost continual intoxication for the previous six weeks. (See also De Grammont ) The weather during much of May 1803 was, according to The Times , ‘ungenial’: high winds trapped ships in port, and inland parts saw the fur tippets and fur-lined coats of January hastily retrieved from storage. An unfortunate moment, this, for an ostler at the Spread Eagle to be careless with a candle. On the morning of Monday, 9 May, he had been using it to singe the hairs out of a horse’s ears (a practice furiously opposed by veterinary surgeons but widely believed to improve the animal’s hearing), but forgot to put it out when he left the stable. Shortly afterwards, passers-by saw smoke issuing from the building. They rushed to open the door; the incoming air turned a smouldering fire in to an inferno. In minutes the winds had spread the flames in every direction. The Spread Eagle, its neighbour, the Falcon, and thirteen small tenements were burned to the ground, as were haystacks two hundred yards away. At one point, there were even fears that the Bishop’s Palace would catch fire. Catastrophe was averted only after two days and nights of ceaseless effort by labourers and soldiers and the fire engines from Brampton, Godmanchester, Huntingdon, Offord and St Neots (at a cost to the parish of £25. 9s. 0d. in payments to the fire-fighters). In all, property worth more than £2,000 was destroyed, very little of it insured. The churchwardens’ accounts record that donations totalling £560. 0s. 0d. were received from Buckden itself and the surrounding towns and villages. A pair of cottages, this time owned by the parochial charities, burnt down in the early hours of 27 April 1898. They were thatched, of mud and plaster construction, stood on the south side of Mill Road near Hunts End and may have originally been the parish workhouse (q.v.). The respective occupiers were bricklayer’s labourer George Bellamy and stockman William Livett and his family. Awakened by a crackling sound, Mr Livett opened his bedroom door. Flames leapt towards him, singeing his beard, and in the words of the local paper ‘he hurriedly made an exit’. He discovered that his roof was on fire, woke