Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

35 His wife, Ann, stayed on in their Silver Street home, which adjoined Beech Lawn, with a niece as companion. She died in 1909. Henry’s younger brother, William (1815-1861), was an agricultural labourer all his working life, mostly on Park Farm. He became a Wesleyan in 1838, but in 1844 was one of the first to be converted by the Primitive Methodists’ Buckden mission in 1844. Despite his having had almost no education, his obituary in The Primitive Methodist Magazine For The Year Of Our Lord 1860 described him as ‘a useful local preacher’, ‘generally [well] received’ for his ‘pretty good’ preaching abilities. He died at his home in Lucks Lane five days after the 1861 census. His last words to his widow and seven young children were: ‘All is well, I am now going home.’ High Street. Buckden’s stretch of the great north-south route between London and Scotland has had several other names during its history: the Old North Road and the Great North Road were still appearing in addresses until the last years of the 20thC; and, less romantically, to the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation it was ‘a length of the London - Edinburgh - Thurso Trunk Road to be superseded’. High Street shops. Starting on the east side of the High Street, the corner now occupied by the cosy bar of the Lion Hotel was a butcher’s shop with a house behind where the butcher’s nephew, veteran retired postman Fred Brown, was born. Moving southwards, there were two premises in what is now the entrance to the Lion car park. One was occupied by a tailor. On the south side of that entrance is 40 High Street. Since 1995, this has housed Elouise Lingerie, which sells ladies’ wear: night, swim and under. From early in the last century to 1952, No. 40 was part of the Bowtell building (see below); from 1922 it was occupied by the post office (see under Post Offices .). Bowtells was the major retailer in Buckden from its start in 1902 until the 1960s, when its range of services began to be run down. The shop built in April 1923 has now been split into three parts. The larger part is One Stop, a convenience store which incorporates the sub-Post Office. Next to it at No. 34 is Susan Peters, a shoe and ladies’ accessories shop, and at No. 32 Tangles hair studio. The butcher’s shop at No. 28 , briefly Scotts Rare Breed Meats Ltd (formerly G. Day & Sons) and now under the name Day again, stands on the site of a terrace of cottages. Families known to have lived there include the Chandlers and the Sabeys. The north end of the Vine public house (q.v.) was variously occupied by a tailor and Buckden Farmers Butchers, a co-operative venture. The entrance was in the north wall. Two hundred years ago, the area of the present access road to King George Court and the George Hotel was occupied by a house and garden that were home to the George’s innkeeper. In the 19thC the house was converted into two shops, one of which was the Post Office, which also sold stationery. The ground floor of the George Hotel extended from its south end to the archway. North of the archway was the establishment of Mrs Ethel M. Lofts (née Bayley), which combined the sale of newspapers, books and antiques. Until 2008, one of her invoices was still displayed in Days’ butcher’s shop opposite the Vine. She also ran a lending library (1924 motto: ‘Why buy Books when you can borrow one for 2d? Over 800 up-to-date Novels.’). Her husband, Arthur Henry Lofts, was a Londoner. The son of a fishmonger, he first visited Buckden in 1911 as a collector for the Fishmongers’ and Poulterers’ Institution. In about 1913, he settled in the village and started an antiques business. He married Ethel in 1915. They had met as neighbours: she had been employed at the Post Office next door. He died in 1943, aged 85. During the 1920s, he had been a bailiff of the Bishop of Peterborough’s Court in Buckden, in which capacity he attended the General Courts Baron and Customary Courts held at Buckden Palace by Robert Holmes Edleston (q,v,). On the corner of George Lane was John James Papworth’s bakery which later became Watkins’ newsagents. For a time, Watkins’ also incorporated the Post Office, where Buckden’s incoming mail was received and sorted before delivery. A hundred yards northwards are Nos. 61-63 High Street, to which the beauty salon Equilibrium came as the latest in a long line of businesses. The premises began life in the early 18thC as two cottages. During the early years of the 20thC they housed a small private school for girls (see Bowling, Mrs Sarah ) and then a bicycle shop (see Robinson’s Garages ) . Later, in the days when the Great North Road traffic ruled the High Street (before the A1 was dualled), the premises were run as a café for perhaps fifty years by, among others, Robert Townsend and the Geerings. It was much patronised by truck drivers, to the irritation of residents who had to cope with the resulting noise and parked lorries. It was then for some years a jewellers and gift shop, Rings and Things. Equilibrium is now the most northerly retail enterprise on the High Street. Until 2003, however, there was also the Spread Eagle (q.v.), a public house that had started life as coaching inn. For many years its northern wing was used as a shop, notably as a picture and art gallery into the 1990s. But like the pub itself, it is now a private house. A few yards further on, in front of the old Baptist chapel (also now a house), there is a terrace of 1960s houses. These replaced a row of ancient cottages, which had originally been yet another public house; the southernmost of these was a greengrocers shop for a time. It was reported Two WWI troopers of the Lovat Scouts who were based at the Towers at the time. The left side soldier is a marksman and may also be a farrier. The shop-cum-café behind is now ‘Equilibrium’, the owners having loaned the photograph.