Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

54 P Page family members played a significant part in Buckden life for the best part of fifty years as carpenters, builders, farmers, wheelwrights, undertakers and parish councillors. In about 1856, Thomas Page of Hail Weston moved to Diddington to work for Squire Thornhill. He was a carpenter, as were the two sons who came with him. His wife may have been skilled in brewing: their new home was the Black Horse, a recently vacated beer-house. In 1869, the elder son, Philip, married a Brampton tailoress, Jane Alger, and settled down in Buckden on the corner of Hunts End and Church Street. The following year, his brother George also wed. After briefly living with his parents, George and his new wife, Caroline (Carrie) Stevens, also moved to Buckden, where Philip and George went into partnership as P. & G. Page (later Page Brothers), carpenters and builders. The business expanded rapidly, but it was George, not the older Philip, who became the dominant partner. In the 1881 census, Philip is listed simply as a builder, while George is described as a builder employing twenty-four men and four boys. Philip and his family had in fact moved to the other side of Hunts End, allowing George and his family to take over the house attached to the firm’s workplace. This change may reflect declining health on Philip’s part: he died towards the end of 1884, aged only 47. George then continued under his own name until his son, George Thomas, was old enough to join him in a new partnership, George Page and Son, builders, undertakers and wheelwrights.. In 1898, George Thomas married his cousin Jane (Philip’s daughter), rescuing her from life as a dressmaker in London, where she and another young woman from Buckden, Louisa Hornsey, were boarding in the house of a War Office computer. (At that time, a ‘computer’ was still a person who worked with figures.) Although George senior died in 1912, George Thomas continued to trade as George Page and Son until his death late in 1928. The business was then taken over by builder and undertaker J. W. Smith (q.v.). George Thomas had added farming to the family business interests. At one time or another he occupied the White House, Low Farm and (from 1913) The Hoo. A particular style of brickwork characterised the buildings of the Pages. Among examples still to be seen in the village are The Gables and Hinsby’s Corner (42 Church Street). The mock-Elizabethan facade of the One Stop shop in the High Street is also their work. The firm was also heavily involved in the building of new houses after the First World War; these took priority over its completion of the now demolished Rifle Range (q.v.) in Church Street. See also Stannard, Violet Kate and The Gables. pageants had been a popular entertainment in Edwardian times, and were revived in the 1920s and 1930s - this time, perhaps, to reassure people that the First World War and the momentous social and economic changes it brought about had not cut Britain off from its glorious past. Pageants were staged at castles, churches, schools and stately homes; in town squares and municipal parks; on humble village greens. Buckden’s most notable contribution, the Pageant of the Centuries: 1086 to 1814 , attracted national attention in 1932 because of its setting – the romantic, part-restored Palace – and because of the unusual circumstances of its coming into being. It was written, produced and presented by a young dance band leader from London, Arthur Harold Capel, who wished to raise money for Huntingdon County Hospital, one of whose doctors had saved his father’s life. Capel’s ‘Tale of Fair Ladies and Gallant Gentlemen’ drew its cast from almost every social group in Buckden and several neighbouring communities. The Hunts Post ’s enthusiastic review took up almost the whole of one of its (very large) pages, and included a photograph of the Chief Constable, Captain Rivett-Carnac, looking particularly fetching in Tudor costume as the lover of one of Henry VIII’s wives. Unfortunately, an accident removed him from the show after only one night. Among the local performers were three generations of the Langley family (q.v.), one of whom, Captain A. G. Langley MC, played the only major speaking role, the Marshall who introduced each scene. There was an unscheduled diversion one night, when pale hands were seen moving along the parapet of the Great Tower. ‘This had a terrifying effect on all the lady folk,’ according to Maurice Milner, because at this time the tower was a potential death-trap, with crumbling brickwork, damaged stairways, no roof and no floorboards. The hands belonged, in fact, to cousins Harold and Cyril Milner, who challenged the very large policeman sent to bring them down to ‘come up and fetch us’ – a challenge he wisely declined. They made their escape in their own time and were sensible enough not to repeat the escapade. The pageant was scheduled to run for a week in July/August, but ticket sales were badly hit by unsettled weather at the start of the run. The decision was therefore taken to extend the run to a second week: an extraordinary commitment on the part of all those involved. Newspaper accounts indicate that audiences were enthralled by the setting, the costumes, the skilful deployment of over one hundred players, and the spectacular lighting effects – including the flickering flames that consumed the unfortunate ‘Witch of Warboys’ (who in reality had been hanged). Electric lighting on this scale must have been a revelation to many villagers, whose homes had only recently ceased to be lit by paraffin lamps and candles and whose windows still looked out on to streets sparingly lit by a thrifty parish council. “The Marshall and attendants” Judith Addington