Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

A HISTORY OF ST MARY’S, THE PARISH CHURCH 122 To celebrate the Prince of Wales’s (later King Edward VII) wedding, the church bells were rung on 10 March 1863. They would not be heard again for another sixty-seven years. ‘Owing to a misunderstanding’ between the Rev. Daniel Haigh and the bell-ringers, the ringers refused to ring the bells and he refused to relent. It would appear that the vicar had banned their centuries-old tradition of drinking beer in the ringing chamber. After being silent for so many years, the bells became fixed in their frame and it was necessary to re-hang them in 1928, and then have new ringers trained in how to ring them. They rang out again, for the first time in several generations, on 3 May 1930. One wonders what the village thought of the Rev. Timothy Jones, who followed Haigh. An ambiguous entry in the Church School’s Log Book for 1875 reads, ‘The Vicar died on Friday night, half holiday on Tuesday afternoon’! Church Statistics in 1885 We can get a fascinating snapshot of the village as it was 120 years ago from the Rev. Henry Roxby’s statistics of June 1885: - Total Parish population 1042, of whom ‘I suppose 2/3rds labouring Class’. Attending St. Mary’s church 540. Church holds c. 400, of whom 230 pay Pew Rent Attending Dissenting Chapels 350. (Wesleyan, Primitive Methodist and Baptist). Neglecting worship 152. Holy Communion first and 3 rd Sundays, average 150 communicants. 41 presented at last Confirmation, 10 became communicants. Mixed boys/girls school, 94 attend. Infants school, 76 attend Sunday School, 62 boys & 61 girls. 10 Sunday School teachers. Gross income £368. Declined from £480 in 10 years due to poor seasons (harvests). The busy 1880s Wednesday, 28 June 1882 saw the parishioners, the wardens (Messrs Marshall and Linton) and Rev. Roxby gathered at a meeting of the Vestry (the forerunner of today’s Parochial Church Council [PCC]) to consider purchasing a new organ and building a new organ chamber and vestry. The medieval vestry was too small and the contract for the rental of their current organ was about to run out, and it was thought desirable to construct a new building for the two. With their architect they came up with an excellent plan; the westernmost chancel north window was to be retained and moved north, stone by stone, to form a transept wherein the new organ would be built. The new vestry would be entered from this transept beside the organ while retaining the thirteenth century vestry doorway in the chancel. Much fund-raising took place for the construction; the organ alone, built by Nicholson & Lord of Walsall, costing £350 in 1884. The impressive brass eagle lectern was donated in memory of Canon Henry Linton and used for the first time at Easter 1888. And the fifteenth century font had its corroded base replaced in 1889. Three o’clock on the afternoon of Sunday, 24 March 1895 would not have been a good time to be sitting in church; and, fortunately, no one was. A great south-westerly gale had been blowing all day and finally, by mid afternoon the spire could take no more and its upper portions and the weathervane collapsed into the north aisle. This was not taken as any sort of omen and soon £53 5s 0d was raised to replace the spire. Tradition has it that while the steeple was being rebuilt one of the workers, named ‘Long Tip’ Collins, performed a headstand on the capstone! Mrs Linton kindly donated a new weathercock. Seven feet across and five feet ten inches high, it shines proudly above us still. A combination of rusting iron inserts and sonic booms from jet aircraft in the early 1960s caused this same section of the steeple to weaken again, and the village dug deep to find £1700 to replace the top ten feet six inches in 1965. The opportunity was taken to regild the weathercock and a lightning conductor was added. The Great Refurbishment St Mary’s did avoid the worst of Victorian meddling with its medieval fabric; still, the Edwardians really could not leave it alone. There is a letter in Cambridge University Library from the renowned local architect Sidney Inskipp-Ladds to Sir Arthur Marshall, churchwarden, dated 28 February 1908. It reads in part: