Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

61 In 1898, a year of ‘great and uneventful prosperity’ according to the chairman’s report to the AGM, the committee bought the freehold of the property of which the Reading Room formed a part. The price was £241. 12s. 0d., which also included neighbouring stables and enough land to allow for future expansion. The facilities were in use for nearly thirty years, until the opening of the Rifle Range (q.v.) and its Recreation Rooms. The building was then bought by Mr S. E. Hinsby in February 1921 for £300. The Reading Room was converted to a general store which stocked whatever the tenant felt would sell. Among the services remembered by the late Alice Whitmee was the borrowing of clothing or shoes on approval from Barratts in St Neots. Mr W. F. Smith of South Africa recalls that his father Frank Smith ran it as a draper’s shop (his memories are of being there in the mid-1920s). Later the building was first tenanted and then bought by the Pipe family (q.v.). External changes in the building can be traced in photographs. They were limited to the removal of elaborate doors and windows from the front elevation, the brick structure being unchanged. There is a curious finial on the gable end which, we have been reliably(?) informed by a white witch, is to keep away the other sort. Reynolds family. There have been Reynoldses in Buckden since before the mid-16thC. What their status was in the early years is not always clear, but in the 18thC a Cambridgeshire branch of the family came to play a prominent role in the social and economic life of the parish and, indeed, the county. Although they eventually established their seat at Little Paxton Hall, they remained influential in Buckden, where they continued to own or occupy land and property until the mid 19thC. Their association with the village began with Richard Reynolds, Bishop of Lincoln 1723-1744, who found Buckden Palace ideally placed as a centre from which to tour his huge diocese. Several of his sons were ordained, six of them enjoying suspiciously successful careers within their father’s diocese. The eldest of these, Archdeacon George Reynolds, followed his father’s example and lived in or near Buckden for a time. At least three of his children were born here. They were Anthony and Lawrence (yet more clergymen!), and Richard, a lawyer. Richard inherited Paxton Hall from the archdeacon, to whom it had been transferred by his father, the bishop. Next to Bishop Richard, Anthony’s son Lawrence (1771- 1839) was the family member most closely connected with Buckden. He too became a lawyer after graduating from Cambridge (where he had been kept under surveillance by government agents as a suspected radical). He occupied (but did not own) Stirtloe House from about 1803 until 1814, when he in turn inherited the Paxton Hall estate – he was a favourite of his aunt and uncle, who had no children of their own, and had been helping them to manage the property for some years. He was an irascible and argumentative man whose courtship of Miss Bromhead, a Lincolnshire heiress (‘more of a law suit than a love suit’, said his aunt drily) came to an abrupt end when Lawrence and her clergyman father quarrelled furiously over the size of her dowry. Fortunately, his eventual marriage in 1802 to Mary Cole was both happy and busy, producing about 15 children despite Lawrence’s suffering much from ‘Pains in his Loynes’. These were a legacy of his time in Lincolnshire - not inflicted at the hands of his first prospective father-in- law, but the result of a hunting accident. Others with whom Lawrence fell out included his friend and political ally Edward Maltby, vicar of Buckden; his aunt’s protégé and tenant the Rev. Isaac Nicholson; the poor of Buckden; the Charity Commissioners, and the Inclosure Commissioners. His quarrel with the poor and the commissioners arose when he was accused of having abused his position as a trustee of Burberry’s Charity during the inclosure of Buckden: giving the charity some land and decayed old buildings at Stirtloe in exchange for a more valuable cottage and garden. This might seem questionable behaviour in one who was at various times High Sheriff of the county, a captain in the militia, and chairman of the Huntingdonshire Quarter Sessions; and indeed, ‘You, Sir, should be ashamed of yourself,’ was the barbed subtext of the commissioners’ conclusion. Al- though finding that the charity had probably not actually lost by the transaction, they added: ‘...but, as Mr. Reynolds was a trustee at the time, an ex- change of part of the charity-estate for premises belonging to him could not properly be made at his instance, unless some positive advantage would manifestly result from it to the charity.’ One of his sons, Captain Richard Anthony Reynolds, inherited his father’s volatile temper and put paid to a promising army career by sending his commanding officer a letter accusing him of insulting behaviour and, in effect, of cowardice. He then challenged him to lay aside their differences in rank and meet him in a duel. Unfortunately for him, his commander was the equally short-tempered James Brudenell, Earl of Cardigan, who declared the letter ‘disrespectful, insubordinate, offensive and insulting’, ordered Reynolds’s arrest and prosecuted him before a court-martial. Reynolds was found guilty and cashiered for conduct unbecoming an officer and gentleman. This caused public outrage, not least because in the meantime Cardigan himself had also been arrested – on a charge of attempted murder, having shot another of his officers in a duel. Cardigan was tried by the House of Lords, found not guilty and survived to lead the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854. Captain Reynolds was quietly reinstated in rank and lived out the rest of his life as a reasonably popular squire and magistrate. Ironically, history had already linked the Brudenell and Reynolds families: both had held the Manor of Buckden Brittens (which included land at Stirtloe), the Brudenells in the 17thC and the Reynoldses in the 19thC. Bishop Reynolds died in his London house, but is buried in St Mary’s Church, as are his wife and other members of the family, including Lawrence Reynolds’s first born son, who died in infancy. Richard III (1452–1485, king 1483-1485) On 15 March 1484, Richard arrived in Buckden to enjoy one of the few quiet interludes in his troubled reign. He and his queen, Anne, broke their journey between Cambridge and Nottingham to spend a pleasant few days here with the Bishop of Lincoln, John Russell, who was also Richard’s Lord Chancellor. Barely a month later a messenger arrived at Nottingham Castle with the news that Richard’s eleven year old son, Edward, was dead. The loss of his only legitimate heir strengthened his enemies and accelerated the disintegration of his rule. He passed through Buckden at least twice more during his frequent forays to protect the north – by force or diplomacy – from the ever-troublesome Scots. Rifle Club, Buckden: see the following entry.