Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

59 after a local farmer, Mr Cranfield, had filled it in early in the last century. His infill included the stones of the surrounding wall, which he apparently demolished on his own initiative. The resulting level area became a popular area for public entertainments. It is noticeable, however, that the pond still re-emerges under heavy rain, flooding the roadway at the northwest corner of the green. See also pinders. Poor Law: see parish workhouse Post Offices. The location of Buckden’s sub-Post Office has changed several times – once, in the early 1980s, with extraordinary speed. The first known location was next to the George Hotel in a shop which stood across what is now the entrance to King George Court and the hotel car park (this shop had earlier been the house in which landlords of the George lived.). We know from trade directories that an early (1839) postmaster was George Usher; he was also a shoemaker. The 1841 census is silent on the identity of the postmaster, but there is no reason to suppose it was not still Mr Usher. The census does identify the village post boy, who was William Chandler (q.v.). By 1869 the sub- postmaster was Mr John Gace Langley (q.v.), who took over from Thomas Darlow. As happens today, he ran the Post Office as part of a larger business: he was also a grocer, draper and ironmonger. When Mr Langley died in 1892, aged 85, he was succeeded by his daughter Sarah, who ran the business – including selling stationery and insurance – with the help of her older sister Mary. By 1901, the sisters had added a young Telephone Clerk to their establishment. Sarah retired in December 1922 after thirty years as postmistress and over fifty years’ association with the Post Office. At a ceremony at Stirtloe House, she was given a cheque for £61.0s.0d. in recognition of her long service. The Post Office was then moved across the road to a shop presently called Elouise. A postbox was mounted in its wall. This property was part of the new building built for Bowtells (q.v.) by Pages (see under Page family .). The new postmaster was Arthur M. Poulton from Brampton, an ex-army man. Later custodians included a Mr Peach.. On the corner of George Lane and the High Street (formerly known as Papworth’s Corner) was Watkins Newsagents. The Post Office had its third location here for a time in the 1970s. The postbox in the wall at this corner is long-established and looks very similar to that which was across the road and may be the same one. In the early 1980s, a dispute led the Post Office to take the business away from the newsagents (the box was not removed and is still there today) and set up a temporary office in the inner gatehouse at the Towers until a new home was found for it. A planning application was submitted to Huntingdonshire District Council in March 1980 seeking a change of use for No. 42 Church Street from dwelling to Post Office; simultaneously there was an application for the installation of Post Office facilities in the SPAR store on Hunts End. The first application was withdrawn, and the Post Office moved to Hunts End. But still not to a permanent home! Finally or, perhaps, just for the present, the sub-Post Office has come back to the Bowtells building, this time inside the shop itself (now a ‘One Stop’ store, owned by Tesco), its fifth resting place. postal service. In 2009, the last collection from the box in the centre of the village was at 4.45 p.m. Monday to Friday and 11.10 a.m. on Saturday. Trade directories show that in 1903, it was 7.50 p.m., in 1885 and 1855 6.30 p.m., and in 1839 9.00 p.m. ! No collection (or delivery) times are shown in the 1940 directory. But then there was a war on.... pound, the village: see pond and pinders Pretyman , Dr George (later Sir George Pretyman Tomline) (1750-1827) was one of those bishops of Lincoln who preferred to live in Buckden. He was appointed in 1787, the objections of the king (‘Too young, too young!’) being overborne by the prime minister, William Pitt; Pretyman had been Pitt’s tutor at Cambridge and since 1783 had been living with him in Downing Street as his friend and financial policy adviser. To the annoyance of them both, however, the king was less amenable in 1805 and refused Pitt’s request to make Pretyman Archbishop of Canterbury. Pretyman remained in Buckden until 1820, when he was translated to Winchester. He was highly regarded for his good works: one supporter described him as ‘ever searching after new objects of benevolence....a father to the friendless throughout the neighbourhood [i.e. Buckden]’. He was also popular with young clergymen for his book The Elements of Christian Theology , a revision crib that allowed them to mug up essential facts before facing their ordination examination. There were, however, others with whom he was less popular. One was fellow cleric Richard Waldo Sibthorpe, who after visiting the bishop in his Buckden Palace called him uncivil and the most uncouth being he had ever known: ‘I like him neither as a Bishop or a gentleman.’ This dissenting view may have owed something to the bishop’s not inviting him to dinner and being distinctly unsympathetic when Sibthorpe caught a cold in the palace chapel. See also George, Prince of Wales (who found Pretyman a more congenial host) and , Pitt the Younger and soup kitchens. Price, James. In 2002, the Buckden Bowls Club team of Bob Price, James Price and Peter Holmes won through to the quarter-finals of the Yoplait English men’s triples championship – a remarkable achievement made even more remarkable by James Price’s age: he was only 10. That the Buckden trio’s winning streak was then brought to an end by a team from Kent did not detract from James’s fame as the ‘four-foot tall wizard of the green’: the youngest player to compete in the final stages of the national championships. Providence Cottage: see Osborn family. public houses and beer-houses . Buckden’s 19thC residents would be disappointed or elated, according to taste, to find so few licensed premises in the village today. To take an imaginary walk round a Buckden more adequately provided with places of refreshment, see Chapter 16 . Where to Get a Drink. pump, the village. This was situated in Church Street, on the boundary between the Methodist chapel and the present Burberry Homes. It had two orifices, one above the other. The higher of the two was used for filling water carts and washing out farm and other carts (see night-soil collection ). In February 1891, the parish council discussed the ‘water cart nuisance on the footpath at the Wesleyan chapel’. The solution proposed was to require the carts to draw their water from a new well to be sunk beside the village pond; the pond itself would then be filled in. Although the bricks of the wall surrounding the pond could have been used to line the well, this idea was not