Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

52 the days before mains drainage was installed. Among the places it was spread were the Mill Road allotments on Van Diemen's Lane (one resident recalls that immediately after spreading, the ground would ‘glisten attractively in the sun’) and on fields up Perry Road, where on one disastrous occasion a broken chain resulted in the cart releasing its contents backwards down the hill. The cart was washed out at the village pump near the almshouses. This may have been the inspiration for the following lines from ‘Buckden: a Christmas Ballad’ by Archdeacon Knowles: ‘Here old men sit on rustic seat Watching the doings in the street’ During the Second World War, the cart (well cleaned) was sometimes used to ferry the men and women of RAF Graveley to and from Buckden for the dances at the Rifle Range. O Oak Lawn, Mill Road [MapRef 40], was for several hundred years one of the two easternmost houses in the main part of the village (the other was the White House across the road). According to the particulars in a 2008 sale brochure it was originally two cottages, one 17thC, the other 18thC, which were joined together in 1820 to provide a house for the village surgeon. If so, the surgeon may have been Henry Waller, who is known to have been in Buckden by 1822. By the time of the 1841 census, however, it was home to a girls’ boarding school run by Fanny and Laura Beaumont (q.v.). At the time Oak Lawn was owned by one of the leading local families, the Reynolds of Little Paxton. They put it up for auction in 1849, where it was bought by John Linton of Stirtloe House, with whose family it remained until 1964. During this time its occupants included Francis Cheere, a bachelor barrister (not in practice), Miss Catherine Usher (and her companion Miss Clarkson); Miss Mary A Duberley; William Cawcutt – who farmed neighbouring Low Farm but preferred to live at Oak Lawn, putting his bailiff in the farmhouse itself – and Mr Alexander Copping (q.v.). Mr Copping died in 1924 and in 1927 the house again became a surgery as well as a home, first for Dr Robert Davie and then, from 1927 to 1964, for Dr Eric Jolly. Old Tap, the , in George Lane has also been known as the Old Tap Inn, the George Tap and, in the 1980s, ‘Endways’. Probably originally constructed in the 16thC, the Old Tap formed the north side of the George Inn’s courtyard and may have accommodated the innkeeper and less wealthy travellers. Much of what remains was probably rebuilt in 1688. There used to be a large wooden beam leading from the rear of the building across some stables, bearing the carving ‘RL 1688’, regrettably this was cut down with a chainsaw by an owner’s wife in the 1980s (she feared that the beam would fall on her head...). ‘RL’ may have been Robert Longland (1656-1728) or Robert Langley, both of whomwere recorded as innkeepers at that time. Or, indeed, it may have been Richard Lillingstone, who was the Buckden school teacher in 1688. The bricks used in the stables (now garages) facing the lane are certainly pre-1750 (they are identical to those used in the Towers c.1485), but may be reused. In 1716, the churchwarden accounts record George Lake as being the tapster at the George. During the 1820s, John Blincow was probably resident. After the coaching heyday, when the George was tenemented, the owners or tenants of the Old Tap become more traceable, and the censuses record: 1851-61: Samuel Middleton (publican), 1871-81: David Pratt (beer-seller and shepherd), 1887- 1901: Owner, William Reeves, Tenants, David Pratt (licensed 1887-89; he then took over the tenancy of the Spread Eagle) and Henry Usher (licensed 1889-1901). By the 1930s, the tenant was Frederic John Pond (a former soldier in the Huntingdonshire Cyclists Battalion during the First World War). He was released from the copyhold tenancy to the Bishop, by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1938, for £6. 12s. 0d., at which time the house became freehold. The Ponds had a ‘football team’ living in the house, i.e. Mr and Mrs Pond and their nine children. Alice Whitmee recalled Mr Pond as driving a horse and cart, collecting rabbit skins, rags and bones etc., while of Mrs Pond, she remembered ‘a small lady dressed all in black including her head dress, with an immaculate white apron’ in the 1940s. Mr Pond died in the house aged about 90, in 1972; and thereafter the house has changed hands several times. For more on Mr Pond, see Slippery Road Surfaces Committee. Osborn family. We are grateful to descendants of the Osborn family living in Victoria, Australia, and New Jersey, USA, who have provided information about their ancestors. Members of it have crossed tracks with at least one of the evacuees from Tollington School (q.v.). The family originated in Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire. The first to make Buckden his home was ELIPHAZ OSBORN (1817-1893). According to researchers Wendy Rutter and Leslie Osborn Glessner, Eliphaz was The Old Tap Inn when a residence Barry Jobling