Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

THE HISTORY OF BUCKDEN 84 leaving any trace. The village was established on the higher ground, away from the river, not only because of the danger of flooding, but also for reasons of security. The waterways were not only trade-routes and channels for peaceful communication, but could also carry people with less friendly intentions, and the settlement on higher ground was less vulnerable to and more defensible against such raiders. Here on the higher ground the settlers could draw water from several springs (Springfield Close is on the site of some of these); there was woodland for fuel and shelter, and there was cultivable land to grow food and graze stock. Material confirmation that an Anglo-Saxon settlement indeed existed was found in 1961 when the by- pass was being constructed. Just north of the roundabout the site of a ‘boat-shaped’ building was found and investigated. Pottery sherds which included St Neots ware suggested it had been occupied during the eleventh century. Later building has undoubtedly obliterated other signs of Anglo-Saxon occupation. Domesday Buckden The first written reference to Buckden, as for many places, occurs in Domesday Book, the enormously detailed survey which William I ordered to be carried out following his conquest of England in 1066. People at the time felt as if they were undergoing an interrogation as thorough as on the Day of Judgment, hence the name, but the king was mainly interested in the taxable value of the lands he had conquered. From Domesday we find that in 1086 Buckden was in the Hundred of Toseland and the bishop of Lincoln was lord of the manor, holding the whole village from the king. There are problems of translation and inter- pretation but a modern version is: In Buckden the bishop of Lincoln had 20 hides [a measure of land] tax- able. Land for 20 ploughs. Now in lordship 5 ploughs; 37 villagers and 20 smallholders have 14 ploughs. A church and a priest. 1 mill, 30s; meadow, 84 acres; woodland pasture 1 league long and 1 league wide [a league was 1.5 miles]. Value before 1066 £20; now £16 10s. In some ways this is quite a typical picture. The lord of the manor farmed a quarter of the land for himself. Thirty-seven householders were ‘serfs’ or slaves, obliged to work for the lord; twenty others held plots of land from him and farmed on their own account. It is possible to make an approximate calculation of the village population from these figures: the 57 represent adult male householders, and experts reckon this number may be multiplied by 4.5 or 5 to estimate the total population, therefore it will have been in the region of 250 residents. The church and watermill were essential features. There was quite a large area of meadowland, managed for grazing and for hay, undoubtedly the low-lying fields near the river which were difficult to plough. The ‘woodland pasture’ was on the higher ground to the west, and was later developed into the bishops’ deer-park. 1 The manor was already at this time held by the bishop of Lincoln. (This disproves a persistent story, which the antiquarian Leland appears to have started in the sixteenth century – that it was transferred from the abbey of Ely.) It is thus clear that by the end of the eleventh century, some sort of episcopal residence had already been established here. This might seem odd, but the ecclesiastical map of England has altered a great deal and in those days the see of Lincoln stretched from the Humber to the Thames, so that Buckden made a good central stopping-off place for the bishops, who were expected to advise the king in London as well as carry out ecclesiastical duties in their cathedral city. A stray piece of evidence in the Life and Miracles of St Ivo , which was written within a few years of the Domesday survey, strongly suggests that the bishops had not only a manor house, but also a garden, for the action revolves around a ‘French gardener’ and his son. 2 Medieval Buckden During the Middle Ages a village plan must have emerged which would be recognizable today. The Great North Road formed the High Street, and in the northern part of the village it had on its east side the palace, on its west the bishops’ deer-park. South of the palace was Church Street, leading east to the river Ouse. South of this junction the building now called the Lion Hotel was already in existence: a ceiling boss in the lounge is dated 1500. It shows the ‘Agnus Dei’ (lamb of God) and the building may have originated as a guest-house of the palace, though this is speculation. The church was close to the palace: so much so that the north aisle wall had to be buttressed to stop it subsiding into the moat. Further along on the other side of Church Street was the manor house, the frontage of which has changed little. Luck’s Lane led south to Stirtloe, and Silver Street north. ‘Luck’ and ‘Silver’ were probably former landowners. Other (modern) street-names give clues to the medieval lay-out: ‘Glebe Lane’ where the glebe or vicarage lands once were and ‘Vineyard Way’ near where the bishop’s vines were cultivated. Mill Lane led to the water-mills on the river. Around this residential nucleus were the village’s open fields: a four-field system of rotation was 1 For more on the deer-park see entry in the A to Z Section 2 See miracles in the A to Z Section