Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

THE HISTORY OF BUCKDEN 89 century of security and stability when the worst that could happen was a bad harvest. So how can we fail to quote the registrar who enjoins us in the eighteenth-century register: ‘Be it Remembered ye 4th day of May In the Year 56 was a very Snowy Day.’? Victorian Buckden The first decades of the nineteenth century saw the beginnings of great changes. Since medieval times methods of farming had changed little, the usual plan being open fields where landowners and leaseholders cultivated scattered strips. In Buckden the four fields were North, South, West and Mill Fields: three would usually be under cultivation while the fourth lay fallow each year. About 2500 acres (of the parish’s total area of 3039) were farmed and of these the bishop of Lincoln, who was Lord of the Manor of Buckden and the Members, owned about half. The second manor, Buckden Brittains, whose lord at this time was Lawrence Reynolds, was a great deal smaller (225 acres) and there were four other people farming over 100 acres. All over England there was a move towards consolidating farming lands into fields which could be enclosed and cultivated more efficiently, and in 1813 Buckden’s Enclosure Act was passed. A reading of the schedule shows that the new arrangement was by the agreement of, and largely to the advantage of, the major landowners. It is difficult to assess its effect on the ordinary villager but the parish undoubtedly began to look very different as fields were fenced and hedged. The development which brought the greatest changes to Buckden was the coming of the railways. The opening of the Liverpool to Manchester railway in 1830 was the beginning of a transport revolution which led inevitably to a decline in the coaching trade which had underlain Buckden’s Georgian prosperity.. Already in 1854 the History, Gazetteer and Directory of the County of Huntingdon can say Buckden is now ‘a quiet insignificant place compared to what it was in coaching times, when the traffic though it was very considerable, but the many railroads which intersect the country have deprived it of this trade and support. Not one coach is now to be seen in the streets of this once bustling village. Signs of this decline in importance are visible everywhere; the most prominent is the large and mansion-like inn (the George) now divided into several tenements.’ The abrupt change in Buckden’s fortunes is reflected also in the figures for its population. In 1801 (the first national census) these had reached 869. The number of inhabitants rose to 1095 by 1831 and to 1209 by 1841, but in 1851 there were only 1172 inhabitants and in the hundred years following the figure remained about a thousand. (It only increased dramatically in the 1960s.) The census returns which provide these population figures are a mine of information about the villagers of Buckden. Those of 1841 onwards list all the inhabitants by name and give details of ages, jobs and birthplaces. Using the return of 1871 and a variety of other sources (including the parish registers, post office directories, newspaper files) a local historian, Tom Lamb of Brampton, built up an amazingly detailed picture of Victorian Buckden. The two census enumerators went from house to house on foot, visiting 253 inhabited houses in all and recording a population of 1009: 474 males and 535 females. There were 260 families listed and some simple arithmetic provides the first surprise: the average family must have numbered fewer than four. This is rather different from the popular picture of the Victorian family with its tribe of children. It is also salutary to note how many jobs you could get done without leaving Buckden. To serve 1009 villagers and travellers passing through there were: 4 butchers; 2 builders; 6 blacksmiths; 3 basketmakers; 3 bakers; 2 carriers; a coachsmith; 7 bootmakers, cordwainers and shoebinders; 6 carpenters; a coalmerchant; 2 drapers; 4 dressmakers; a dairywoman; 5 grocers; 2 general dealers; 4 gardeners; a greengrocer; a higgler; 2 lacemakers; 5 laundresses; 2 maltsters; a miller; 4 potmakers; 2 pedlars; 3 painters; a plumber and glazier; 2 seamstresses; a saddler; 2 straw bonnet makers; a thatcher; 5 tailors and a wheelwright. These were in addition to the farmers, bailiffs, shepherds, drovers and labourers on the village’s eleven farms. For the scant leisure of all these people there were thirteen inns and public houses. Several still exist, but we have lost the Windmill, the Three Mill Bills, the Old Square and Compass, the Old Tap, the Black Horse, the White Horse, the Crown and the Anchor. Another common illusion which this census shatters is the one which portrays our ancestors as people who were born, married and died in the same spot. We find that 422 out of the 1009 inhabitants were born outside Buckden: 223 in other parts of Huntingdonshire and 199 even further afield; a few came from Ireland, Scotland and France. As the population was falling, at least as many Buckden-born must have moved out of the village. The changes in transport and communications help to explain this surprising mobility. The decline may also have owed something to the great agricultural depression which was just then beginning and which tempted many British farm labourers to seek their fortunes in Canada and Australia.