Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

79 country women in a man’s world came together to learn skills to benefit their families and to help their communities. The Buckden branch was formed, as were many others, in 1919, a year that saw national membership surge to over 55,000. At that time it was not unusual to elect the local ‘lady of the manor’ as President of the Branch Committee; and Buckden chose Miss Philippa Linton (1878-1962) of Stirtloe House. The committee first met in Field House, Silver Street, where it set the subscription at 6d . The members met for the first time at the Rifle Range, where they learnt how to re-bristle a brush. Under the supervision of committee member Mrs A. Stoneham as Librarian, books bought secondhand from Boots were lent for a fortnight. No figure exists for the size of the membership in the early days but a tea party held in 1920 for the children of members catered for fifty children. From the beginning, besides the undoubted educational lectures and demonstrations which covered many useful subjects such as cookery, upholstery, poultry keeping and disease prevention, there were also magic lantern shows bringing the exotic sights of Mesopotamia and Egypt to Buckden, and evenings devoted to historical subjects, the Great Duke of Marlborough and General Wolfe among them. It is interesting to note that a glove- making class simply assumed that its participants would supply their own rabbit skins (in 1973 a similar class offered the name of a firm who would supply them). In addition, the social life of Buckden was enhanced no end by a startling number of whist drives, dances and garden parties in members’ gardens – or fields. One such event in 1923 resulted in a donation to the hospital of £5. A dance competition held in the garden of the White House in Mill Road in 1929 offered prizes of cigarettes and stockings! The ladies of Buckden also busied themselves in the knitting of mufflers for the patients at Wyton Sanatorium during 1925, and in 1926 undertook to provide the cricket teas. Throughout its history the WI has always sought to support and help good causes. In recent years, Buckden has helped to provide clean water for Lesotho, kit out the Cheshire Home at Brampton and, for several years, to organise the house-to-house collection for Cancer Relief. However in 1933 the Institute found itself organising a house-to-house collection for its own distressed areas when hard times came upon Buckden itself. A gap appears in the recorded history for the years 1933–1951. No minute books for either committee meetings or monthly meetings are available, although the branch is known to have continued in being. Apparently this is not an isolated case: other local villages have a similar gap in their histories. It is sad that the war years are not covered as these saw the W.I. come into its own in ‘keeping the home fires burning’. However, when minutes start again in 1952 it is with another garden party, and in the following years there were fêtes and fun aplenty. It became usual in the early 1950s for dances to be held with either a hired or borrowed radiogram – several in the garden of Ivelbury, where Ivelbury Close now stands. Although interesting and informative talks and demonstrations were still given, social changes seem to have made the lifeline to further education which the early Institutes had offered, less important to the health and well-being of rural families. In the light of present attitudes, it is interesting that in 1957 the provision of cigarettes and chocolates on the table at the Christmas Party was preferred to the more traditional crackers! Indeed, smoking and catering for it, appear often in committee minutes. In 1970 it was agreed to provide saucers for smokers at monthly meetings, and in 1975 an improved plan saw one committee member responsible for bringing to the meetings a jamjar full of sand where cigarettes may be stubbed out! Important dates in the Institute’s and the nation’s calendar have been marked in Buckden by the gift to the village of something to enhance the environment. Shrubs and a seat in the churchyard, roses and a seat at the Burberry Homes and a tree in the cemetery mark such occasions. A programme of daffodil planting started in 1984 continues to this day. The first bulbs were planted on the roundabout, but after police permission to cross the A1 was withdrawn, the site at the northern underpass was chosen and blooms beautifully each spring. In 1974 the energy crisis and ‘winter of discontent’ saw the WI at its ingenious best. Meetings, held at that time, in a mobile classroom at the school, were warmed by two paraffin heaters brought in for the occasion and each committee member brought a flask of hot water so that tea and coffee might still be served. Its most testing time, though, came that year when, as Hostess Institute for the group of eight to which it belongs, it was required to produce refreshments in the middle of the sugar shortage! No cakes (the WI’s enduring strong point) being possible, one sausage roll, one sandwich and a mince pie graced each plate that year. The resumed minutes of 1951 reveal a keen drama group which continues to this day. For many years it had strong connections to Buckden Theatre Club, the village drama group whose own history takes it back to the Mace family: Mrs Dossie Mace who smiles out of those 1950s pictures in the WI’s album, and her husband Frank. Today, the education offered by the WI is more ambitious, supplemented as it is by Denman College in Oxfordshire which offers residential courses in exquisite needlework and embroidery, cookery and music but also, through its highly qualified teachers, a similar syllabus to Further Education Colleges throughout the country. Monthly meetings continue to instruct and entertain and offer its members friendship and support. Modern women, perhaps, do not gain the same benefits as their sisters of nearly a century ago but the value of the Women’s Institute to women in rural England and Wales is reflected in the still growing membership and it is comforting to know that the WI’s ideals of home and family still resonate as strongly in the on-line years of the 21stC as they did in a small community in Canada at the end of the 19thC. Judith Armitage Woolley, George Newnham (1815-1874) , Buckden’s doctor in the mid 19thC, achieved brief national fame as the debunker of the Lincolnshire New Black Death scare – see Chapter 14 Worley, William brought distinction to Buckden in January 1881 by being a victor in an impromptu skating championship set up in St Neots. The report of the event does not specify which William Worley it was: William junior, aged 20, a recently-married drainer living in Hardwick, or his father William senior, also a drainer and the publican of the Spread Eagle for over 30 years. A reference to experience winning out may be a clue. Wyles, Mary and William. She was the daughter of Great Stukeley farm worker Arnot Pack, and came to Buckden to be a housemaid at the vicarage; he was a tailor, brought up in Hardwick by his grandmother and widowed father, a house carpenter. Perhaps their eyes first met in church: she in the vicarage pew, he in the chancel; he was a member of the choir for over seventy years. They married in 1881, and set up house in Lucks Lane. William had been