Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

50 devised! Now the site is largely occupied by the Mayfield Surgery which stands on piles sunk through the rubbish beneath. Moving on to larger operations, the first company mentioned in Kelly’s Directory is Inns and Co (gravel merchants) in the 1940 edition. The earlier quarry workings were opened east of Lodge Farm and connected by a road to the grading and washing plant adjacent to the village. The company is of some interest as its original business was that of supplying fodder etc. to London stables. The drop in demand as the motor vehicle replaced the horse was countered by Inns and Co moving into aggregates. This company and its successors have been responsible for the majority of the quarrying in the parish. The large- scale winning of sand and gravel started in the early sixties when the dualling of the A1 began; the contractors will probably have been either or both of A. Monk and Co Ltd and Sydney Greene & Co. Another destination for gravels was the dam and water works at Grafham Water built by W. & C. French and Company, and opened by the Duke of Edinburgh on 6 July 1966. In this case W. & C. French and the St Ives Sand and Gravel Co worked a pit in conjunction with Mr W. Brian Carter. As a result of their work a marina pool came into being thus extending the business of Carter’s Boatyard. Mr Carter was awarded the 1970 European Conservation Award by the Duke of Edinburgh and also the Sand and Gravel Award. Another pit worked to supply the Grafham dam etc was that north of the pumping station on the river. Inns & Co. were eventually purchased by a larger winner and supplier of aggregates, Redland Aggregates Ltd, who were in turn taken over in 1997 by the French construction group Lafarge, and have since operated as Lafarge Redland Aggregates. The materials won from yet more areas south of Mill Road were transported by conveyor – a very quiet method – via a tunnel under Mill Road to the grading and washing plant close to the original site. One of the works Lafarge will be undertaking while reinstating the sites will be the filling of the tunnel with concrete. Some pits have been left as open water with islands. One area east of Leadens Lane has been restored for agriculture. Lafarge will be the last quarry worker in the parish as all the sites permitted by the planning authorities have now been worked out. In March 2001, Lafarge and Buckden Marina Ltd. were awarded the Cooper-Heyman Cup by the Quarry Products Association for the year’s most outstanding restoration project in England. Over the years aggregate extraction has both provided local employment and contributed to major national construction projects. But it has not been without controversy. There are disadvantages for a community in having an invasive industrial process on its doorstep. Some people believe that these disadvantages are outweighed when the eventual levelling or submerging of the temporary ‘moon landscape’ turns old gravel workings into sites much favoured by birds both for nesting and for resting places during migration. Others, however, feel that this is insufficient compensation for the loss of so much of the traditional landscape of the Ouse valley. The two points of view are unlikely ever to be reconciled . See also marina and Carter’s Boatyard . miracles. Two Buckden residents are associated with miracles. The first is St Hugh (Bishop Hugh D’Avalon, bishop of Lincoln 1186-1200) whose tame swan may have been seen in the village, as commemorated in a modern statue in the grounds of the palace. Another was probably a gardener from Normandy employed at the palace. His story was recorded in the 12thC among the miracles of St Ivo (who gave his name to St Ives, formerly Slepe). ‘A certain foreigner was staying with his little family in the village called Buckden; he was from overseas, a gardener by trade, and very poorly off. What is more, he had a son whom he loved very dearly who was eager to copy his father’s skill with growing things and worked hard, but he was paralysed. Of course his paralysis was very disagreeable and it disfigured his face, so that he offered a very wretched sight to others, with eyes askew, nose crooked, spreading lips and his mouth almost curving from ear to ear without a break. The father indeed was not a little anxious about treatment for his son, and he spent out what little he had or could get hold of on doctors, but all in vain. ...‘So one Saturday he came unawares (yet straying to his advantage) to a certain village which the common people call Slepe. This mean village, about five miles away from Buckden, is yet greatly renowned almost everywhere on earth for the greatness of St Ivo and the frequency of his miracles. When he arrived there and he realised the reputation of the saint he soon hurried to church with his son. Then, just like the tax gatherer in the gospel, he turned his gaze to the ground, fixed his eyes on the earth, watered his cheeks copiously with tears, and on the altar of his heart he made a burnt offering which was most pleasing to God. ‘When he had been quite a long time at prayer, and had called on God and St Ivo on behalf of his son, he stood up at last, and deservedly he found his son, whom he had brought there paralysed a little while before, completely well, no doubt through the favours of St Ivo. When the father looked at the boy he clapped his hands in delight, and, capering about in the way the French do, in a loud voice he blessed God as wonderful in His saints. Then, his mood transformed by an expression of thanks to the great and blessed Ivo, he returned home the happiest of men, Part of the sand grading plant which was removed along with the rest in 2006