Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

36 that sales were not good largely because so many villagers grew their own vegetables. A tiny outbuilding on the south corner of Taylors Lane has also occasionally served as a shop for a time. Just after the war, it was where butcher Jimmy Hunt sold pork pies and other meat products, but forty or so years later, in complete contrast, it was briefly a vegetarian shop. In Taylors Lane itself is a well-known nursery, Adams Plants. Hillyer, WilliamHenry MD[Durham] LRCP MRCS (1863-1945) was a canoeist, golfer, actor, cyclist, footballer, tennis player, beekeeper, balneologist, parish councillor and Buckden’s doctor through the 1890s. See Chapter 14 Hinsby family. Shrewd St Neots traders with business interests in Buckden, they came from a family that exemplified the geographic and social fluidity of the Victorian class system. Robert Hinsby (1821-1856) was a Somerset-born railway worker whose job as a platelayer took him about the country: of the four children he had with his wife Martha (1819-1892), two were born in Somerset, one in Northamptonshire and one in Norfolk. At the time of his early death, the family was living at Tempsford in Bedfordshire and five years later was still living there in some poverty: the painful illness from which Robert suffered for the last five years of his life must have restricted his ability to earn. Yet by 1871, one of his sons, Samuel, had become a successful carrier, operating between St Neots and Bedford. A few years later he had extended this run to St Ives and Cambridge. By 1879, Samuel and his brother, James, were in partnership not only as carriers but also as farmers, and as corn, coal and grain merchants trading from purpose-built premises in Huntingdon Street. In the 1900s, they introduced a goods and passenger horse-drawn omnibus between Bedford and St Neots. With painfully bad timing they replaced this with a motor bus in 1914; it was almost immediately requisitioned by the army and shipped to France! Samuel Hinsby and his wife Alice had several children, of whom the following had connections with Buckden: Transport F. J. Hinsby and one of his brothers are credited with starting the first bus service from Buckden (see under buses ). Shop Samuel Ernest Hinsby (1882-1973), brother to the bus operators, appears in a 1920 Buckden directory as a shopkeeper. He owned a tobacconist’s shop still remembered by a few as Hinsby’s Corner, since it stood on the eastern corner of Silver Street and Church Street. It was officially 1 Silver Street as that was where the entrance was; it is now 42 Church Street [MapRef 6] , the front door having been moved round the corner when the building was converted to a private house in 1974. In one of the rooms it is still possible to see where the counter was. There is some disagreement among the few residents of Buckden who remember the shop, as to whether there was a sweets machine or a cigarette machine outside. Perhaps there were both. The cigarette machine allowed you to buy three Crail cigarettes for a penny. The row of buildings of which the shop was part, replaced a group of thatched cottages demolished after the disastrous Silver Street fire of March 1909 (see under fires and fire-fighting equipment) . An auctioneers’ notice of June 1920 referred to the building as 'newly-erected business premises'. Mr Hinsby’s wife Maud (née Lee) ran the tobacconists until her death in 1962. The shop was then rented by Mr and Mrs Pipe (q.v.). After Mr Hinsby died in 1973, his trustees unsuccessfully applied for permission to convert the premises into a fish and chip shop. The family then sold all their Buckden properties. Among these was a shop at 49 Church Street (once the village Reading Rooms (q.v.)), which was bought by Mr and Mrs Pipe, who had rented it since 1945. Coal, coke and corn In the family tradition, Mr Hinsby also dealt in these goods, the station at Offord being his source of fuel. The premises were between the shop and bakery – the double gates to the yard are still visible today. A similar business – coal and flour – had existed on this site since before 1891. Farming At his death in 1973, Mr Hinsby was described in the London Gazette as a retired farmer; he had been involved in agriculture since at least 1942, when a local newspaper report of a court case referred to him as a Buckden farmer. Other family activities In his spare time Mr Hinsby helped found the Bowls Club and bowled the first wood at the opening of the greens in Silver Street. He was a Methodist, a parish councillor, a first-class billiards player, a committee member of the Horticultural Society and a long-serving Special Constable. His son, Mr Spencer Lee Hinsby (1916-2003), took several parts in the Pageant of the Centuries held at The Towers in 1932 (see under pageants ). Hodgson, John, Esq. MA (c. 1740-1822) was an ecclesiastical lawyer who acted as secretary to three bishops of Lincoln (Drs Green, Thurlow and Pretyman). He was able and energetic, necessary qualities in a post which required him to work not only in Buckden but as far afield as London and Durham. His period of service lasted fifty-four years (1766-1820), but nearly came to an abrupt end after only forty-five. In January 1812, he, his daughter, his son, his son’s wife, two of Bishop Pretyman’s sons and Captain Thomas Green of Coneygarths were strolling on the frozen canal in the palace grounds when the ice gave way. The whole party except Miss Hodgson descended into eight feet of water. The young men struggled to the bank, only to see Miss Hodgson now disappearing through the ice as she tried to rescue her aged father. Her brother rushed to help her; ice cracked; he sank. Fortunately, Captain Green and the young Pretymans kept their heads. The adventure ended, not in tragedy, but in warm beds and cordials for all. While in Buckden, John Hodgson married widow Sarah Douglas, like himself a native of Northumberland. After his death, she returned there and died in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1836. A new Hinsby cart Barry Jobling