Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

45 take place at 7.30 p.m. on the first Wednesday of the month. The June meeting opens with the Annual General Meeting, which is traditionally followed by a short talk, usually given by the chairman or a past chairman. The Society is affiliated to the Cambridge Antiquarian Society. An album of photographs of the village received from various sources is being assembled with some financial support from the Parish Council. Views from times past are being accompanied by present-day photographs from similar viewpoints. When possible photographs of areas in the parish where change is imminent are being taken. Lofts, Arthur (antique dealer) and Ethel (stationer and newsagent) – see under High Street shops . Low Farm. There are two properties of this name in the parish. The original Low Farm is in Mill Road [MapRef 41] , and was part of the Reynolds family estate until its purchase by the Lintons of Stirtloe House in 1849. Its other names included Faulkner’s Farm (after the tenant of the time) and New Farm. George Page, a prominent Buckden builder, also ran it for a time, as did one of the Cranfield family. In 1989, the then occupiers moved to Stirtloe, and took the name with them for their new farmstead. The property in Mill Road, a Grade II listed building dating from the early 19thC, is no longer in agricultural use. See also dovecotes Luff family. Thomas Luff (born London 1866) was a journeyman blacksmith who lived with his wife and family in Barthrams Yard (q.v.). His children included: William Henry (born 1888), painter‘s apprentice and athlete, whose achievements included winning three of the four cycle races at the Choral Society’s open-air fete in 1905, and being placed in five events in the 1909 annual Friendly Societies’ sports held at Coneygarths. Grace Emma (1896-1912), for whose poignant story see under Girls’ Friendly Society. M Mabel of Bugdene , the 12thC nun who testified that her fellow-religious, Emcina, was saved from choking on a fishbone by being made to swallow water in which the dead body of Master – later Saint – Gilbert had been washed, is now thought more likely to have come from Bowden in Leicestershire. machine-breaking. In March 1831, five respectable farm labourers from Buckden stood in the dock of the courtroom in Huntingdon. They were John Ladds, John Cawcutt, Samuel Smith, Thomas Franklin and William Murden. The charge they faced arose out of the wave of riot, arson, vandalism, extortion and maiming that had swept across southern and eastern England the previous year: a part-spontaneous, part-organised revolt by a rural working class driven to despair by the effects of the agricultural depression that had followed the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. British farming had flourished during the wars, but poor harvests and the return of cheap imported food forced farmers to reduce wages, lay off workers and increasingly mechanize labour-intensive tasks such as threshing. But threshing (the beating of harvested corn to separate the grains from the husks and straw) was traditionally one of the few paid employments by which labourers could lift themselves and their families out of starvation during the miserable winter months, particularly in the predominantly arable areas of the country (on livestock farms the animals still needed to be fed and cared for). The new machines (and their owners) became prime targets of the rioters. Among those arrested in Huntingdonshire were the men from Buckden. The charge against them was not one that carried a likelihood of capital punishment, as did arson or sending threatening letters; but it was serious enough. They were accused of destroying a threshing- machine belonging to a Silver Street farmer, Henry Cope. They would have been aware that in other parts of the country, machine-breakers had already been sentenced to transportation for up to seven years. In the event, William Murden was acquitted and his companions sent to prison for a few months. Their light sentences and their subsequent acceptance back into vil- lage life suggest that not only their neighbours but the judge himself understood the fear and rage that had pro- voked their desperate act. One of the prosecutors at the assizes that week may well have already known some of the five accused: Edward Harvey Maltby (q.v.) had been born in Buckden, the son of the vicar. He certainly knew one of the judges: as a young man, Mr Justice Alderson (q.v.) had lodged at the vicarage as a pupil of Edward’s father. McLeod, Peter (born Scotland c. 1859) came to Buckden as coachman/groom to Sir Arthur Marshall at The Towers; he was also a useful member of the Buckden cricket team. By 1898 he had moved up the High Street to take over the Spread Eagle Hotel, where he offered ‘good stabling accommodation for cyclists’. He lived there with his wife Emma (a schoolteacher’s daughter), three children (all born in Buckden) and a mother-in-law. They were still at the Spread in 1903, but by 1910 it was being run by a young Buckden couple, farmer Ernest Mann and his wife Lily. McRitchie, Donald MB, CM Aberdeen, LRCS & LRM Edinburgh (1854 - 1926) was possibly Buckden’s longest-serving doctor. See Chapter 14 Mafeking, Relief of. The South African War (1899- 1902) between the Boers and the British began in October 1899 with siege of the town of Mafeking. For 217 days up to 8,000 Boer troops tried in vain to overcome a British garrison of some 2,000 men under the command of Colonel Baden-Powell (founder of the Scouting Movement). The siege was followed with intense interest back in Britain, for whose forces the war was otherwise not going well. Rumours of the lifting of the siege reached Buckden on Saturday, 18 May 1900, resulting in a spontaneous procession, patriotic music from the village band and