Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

32 time or another, Thomas, John, and John junior were all churchwardens, and one of the Johns was a highways surveyor, charged with persuading nearby villages such as Southoe to contribute towards the costs of keeping the turnpike road in repair. William South assured the nobility and gentry that he was well-qualified to take over from his uncle (and aunt, who had died earlier in the year) since he had been living in the George for the last fourteen years. This suggests John Hastings had become landlord no later than 1746 and possibly earlier if he was already managing the George before William came to live with him. William South himself died in 1795, and it may have been then or a few years later that the inn passed into the long tenure of John Scarborough, a former butler to the aristocracy, and his wife, Jane. They were popular with all classes of society, local and visiting, and successful enough to set up Mrs Scarborough’s son in an inn of his own at Stilton. Unfortunately this well-intentioned act sowed the seeds of their abrupt and catastrophic decline into bankruptcy in 1816 and 1817 – see Scarborough, Mrs Jane for details. The best-known of all the George’s landlords were the Cartwright family (q.v.), who took over in 1836. George Cartwright was the first, and was succeeded on his death in 1850 by his wife, Elizabeth, who died in 1856. Managing the George did not simply mean running a hotel; it came with its own farm, which, as Mrs Scarborough once pointed out, tended to leave the wife in any partnership carrying the main burden of dealing with guests and travellers. Since George Cartwright was a coach-driver as well as an innkeeper, it is not surprising that the Cartwrights appear to have taken on a manageress or possibly a brewer: during a court case in 1844, the victim of a robbery was said to have foolishly spent too much time in the George sampling ‘Mrs Herbert’s ale’. On Tuesday, 16 May 1837, a traveller stopping off at the inn for mid-day refreshment would have been startled to find himself sharing the premises with nearly sixty clergymen. This was neither a temperance protest nor a gathering of Anglicans for Real Ale; these were the clergy of Huntingdonshire assembling before going over the road to the palace to present a farewell address to their retiring bishop, the last of the bishops of Lincoln. The George changed proprietors as well as landlords several times in its history. In August 1849, for example, it was one of several Buckden lots included in a sale of properties belonging to Pumfretts Brewery, Huntingdon. The adjoining George Tap, two shops and some pasture land were also included. When Mr Edwin Murray left the George and Dragon (as it was by then) in October 1905, all the household furniture and effects were auctioned, ranging from the contents of seven bedrooms to two rustic seats and ‘a useful chestnut pony’. Because of Buckden’s position sixty-one miles from London on the Great North Road, the George was well- placed to recover from the loss of the coaching trade by taking advantage of, first, the cycling boom that started in the last quarter of the 19thC and, second, the advent of the motor car. An early 20thC postcard carries the legend ‘Quaint, Clean, Comfortable, Garage, Billiards,’. In the 1920 Michelin Guide it is described as a ‘comfortable hotel, with modern improvements’, RAC (but not AA) Appointed; its per person charges are 3/- for breakfast, 3/- for lunch, 4/- for dinner, and 4/- to 5/- a night for a room ‘with large bed, light and attendance’ (there is, oddly, no indication of how many rooms there are). One’s chauffeur is fed and accommodated for 8/6 a day, and can use one of the three on-site garages to house, clean and repair one’s car. For more serious repairs and new tyres (Michelin, of course), the A. T. Robinson Garage is just down the road with its inspection pit and spaces for thirty cars. The serious unemployment in the years following the end of the First World War was forcefully illustrated in September 1923, when the George advertised for a porter. It received nearly 100 applications in two days, some from as far afield as Scotland and Wales. The hotel was bought by the Anne Furbank Group in August 2003 and re-opened after eight months’ refurbishment as the George Hotel and Brasserie, with a distinctive sign depicting twelve celebrated Georges (sadly, George Cartwright is not among them) . George Lane [MapRef 15] is now a cul-de-sac, but was once an ancient way which led to Shooters Hill and beyond to the Midlands. It was, in fact, a continuation of Mill Road and Church Street as they ran up from the old ford over the Great Ouse at Offord. Until the 18thC it was known as Perry Way, before the New Road (now Perry Road) was built. It ran along the northern side of the George Inn, of which two edifices remain, the Old Tap (q.v) and an old storage building. At one time, before the fire of 1923 (see under fires and fire-fighting equipment ), there were large stables and farm buildings here including a huge thatched barn, the bishops’ ancient dovecote (q.v), a slaughter house and an osiers business (q.v). Barry Jobling Georges, the. ‘Catalogues may be had, at the George, Huntingdon, Kimbolton, Buckden, Potton, and Bedford’; Although they were not formally linked by anything other than name, these George inns made a convenient network for distribution of auctioneers’ catalogues and other sales particulars. Girls’ Friendly Society. A decorative cast-iron cross in the Lucks Lane cemetery lych-gate is a poignant memorial to Grace E[mma] Luff, a blacksmith’s daughter who died of tuberculosis in 1912, aged 16 . The cross was provided by the Buckden branch of the Girls’ Friendly Society. Founded in 1875 and affiliated with the Church of England, the Society’s original aims were: to maintain a high standard of purity among British girls; to obtain for every working girl of unblemished character a friend in a class above her own. The Society later helped women and girls to emigrate to the colonies (particularly Canada), or, if they wished to stay in England, to find work as pupil teachers, shop assistants, dressmakers or domestic servants: at the time of her death, Grace was working as a kitchenmaid for the Moody family, stationers of Huntingdon High Street. The cross ( see photo ) was placed in the lych-gate early this century after being cleaned and repaired by Councillor Peter Bush, then the parish handyman, who found it discarded under the cemetery hedge. Unfortunately, no records of the Society’s Buckden branch appear to have survived, but we know from newspaper reports that it raised funds through an annual sale of work and dance (music, as always, from the Buckden Band). One such event was held at Beech Lawn in 1908. It included a ‘Do without stall’ and a pastoral play acted by children imported from Huntingdon. One of them was Phyllis Goodliff (1897-1993), later a founder member of the