Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 121 is today, with the kneeling figure facing the altar. It was moved to the north aisle in 1884, when the organ was constructed, and the figure now faces south across the church. Opposite the main entrance was a north doorway, used by the bishop’s staff when he was not resident at the palace. When he was in residence, his staff worshipped with him in the Palace Chapel, except on church holy days, when all celebrated together in the church. Quite how they got across the intervening moat to the north door is open to conjecture. The door was sealed up when the intricate gothic Whitworth memorial was inserted in 1831. This memorial commemorates the life of Robert Hurst Whitworth, who took his maternal uncle’s name and fortune, and died young. His sisters, who paid for the monument, are remembered to the sides of this ornate triptych. Those interested in church architecture and its various orders will be interested to note that the Whitworth memorial’s designer was the architect Thomas Rickman, the man who differentiated church architectural styles and invented the terms Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular. Rickman’s name appears on the left edge of the monument. On the same wall hangs a memorial to an unnamed selfless man. It reads: - ‘Sacred to the memory of an Officer who sincerely regarded this his native village and caused an asylum to be erected to protect Age and reward Industry. Reader, ask not his name, if thou approve of a deed which succours the helpless go and emulate it! Obiit 10 th May 1834 aged 65 years.’ One only has to walk a few hundred yards eastwards along Church Street to find his almshouses, bearing the maxim ‘Industry Rewarded, Age Protected. 1840’, which are today still available to Buckden folk, aided by his legacy. Although he wished to remain anonymous, the building has been known for generations as South’s Almshouses, and recently a sign was erected there to recognise his generosity and to aid visitors. Captain James South, born 1769, died 1834, soldier and philanthropist, thank you. In keeping with the increased social conscience of the day, the Bishops’ Palace was conveyed to the parish vicar in 1842. The bishop of Lincoln remained the Lord of the Manor, however, until 1862, when the Ecclesiastical Commissioners handed the manor over to the bishop of Peterborough. It was this same vicar in 1842, Henry Sidebotham (also known as Sidebottom), who, while on a visit to the Low Countries, purchased eight sixteenth century Flemish carved oak panels of Christ’s Passion and gave them to the church. The wonderfully carved panels were incorporated into modern reading desks and the minister’s seat. Forgotten treasures, they are easily overlooked but they do reward close scrutiny. One can find: the Agony in the garden, the Betrayal, Pilate washing his hands, the Crowning with thorns, the Flagellation, Carrying the Cross, Ecce Homo and the Crucifixion. The Churchyard, the loss of the Palace and a ‘Misunderstanding’ The transfer of the Palace to the vicar proved to be most fortuitous within ten years. The graveyard had become very uneven, unpleasant and overfull, with no room for new interments until Rev. Daniel Haigh gave a strip of the Palace land in 1852, to extend the churchyard to the west. He had been using this land as a kitchen garden (it used to be the Bishop’s Chancellor’s garden) as it was conveniently placed across the road from his vicarage. This vicarage was very spacious and comfortable, being built in 1795 at a cost of £260, and very much in keeping with the position of the incumbent. Yet the donated land could only postpone the inevitable and, after being re-levelled in 1879, the whole burial ground was closed in 1883, owing to overcrowding. It contains 388 visible memorials, a mere fraction of all the burials over seven centuries, which are estimated at around 11,000. An excellent cross- referenced list of the monumental inscriptions in the church and churchyard, detailing all the memorials at St Mary’s, was compiled by the Huntingdonshire Family History Society in 1995. There are reference copies in the church and in the Huntingdonshire Archives. In addition to the aforementioned tabletop tomb purported to contain the Dukes of Suffolk’s remains, there are several notable tombs and vaults commemorating the wealthier of Buckden’s population; only the well-to-do could afford stone memorials, most villagers had wooden markers that have long since decayed. Just south of the porch are several early headstones dating to the 1670s and 1680s, carved with the then fashionable skull and crossbones and hourglasses, a reminder to onlookers of the fleeting time left them. One parishioner quipped that he thought the hourglass referred to the deceased dying of boredom during an interminable sermon! With the closing of the graveyard, the new cemetery in Lucks Lane (also known as Church Lane) was consecrated on 1 September 1883, and following two extensions is still in use today. By 1883, the vicar had relinquished all rights to the Palace entrusted to him, having sold it in 1870 for £3500 to James Marshall, of Marshall & Snelgrove shops. Marshall, in turn, promptly pulled down the last remaining medieval buildings, including the chapel, to improve the view from his Victorian pile. Thus it was that after at least nine hundred years in the same hands, the church and Palace parted company.