Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

71 Lawn, Nutfield and the Towers (later dug up in the interests of archaeology by R H Edleston!). It was not until 1934, however, that a village tennis club was established. It was founded by members of Buckden Bowls Club, whose Silver Street site it shared (along with the mosquitoes from the Towers fishpond). The club’s first grass court was followed by a second in 1935. As with the bowls club, women were welcomed as members from the start. To encourage the young (of both sexes), a junior section was formed in 1948. The 1950s were a period of expansion and innovation. The club’s first two annual singles trophies were donated in 1954 – the Patrick Cup for ladies and the Nutfield Cup for men. Within two years, friendly matches were being played against as many as thirteen neighbouring clubs. The following year, 1957, saw play allowed for the first time on Sundays (but not during the hours of church services!). Club funds were 8s. 6d, but rose to £4. 4s. 5d in 1958, a year that also brought the club its third trophy, the Greta- Osborne Glessner Cup for the under-sixteens. The 1960s, however, initially saw a decline in membership. The courts were closed in 1964 for lack of playing members, which at least had the merit of allowing them to be partially re-turfed. Club funds varied wildly: £4. 5s. 0d in 1966 (when the club finally became independent of the bowls club), and nil in 1967! Spurred on by this, a few dedicated members came together in 1968 to improve finances and membership. Before the end of the year, a membership of fifteen had become seventy-six, funds stood at £4. 1s. 0d, a programme of monthly fund-raising events had been established and a team had been entered in the new Hunts/Peterborough League. All this led to the club ending the decade with all its debts paid off and £20. 18s. 0d in the bank. The 1970s brought great changes to the club, including a new home and the end of play on grass. In 1972, the club was offered the use of a piece of the village recreation ground sufficient to accommodate three courts and a pavilion – with the proviso that the club had to raise the money for any works needed to make the land suitable for play. As it was flooded for much of the year, the committee decided that grass would be an impracticable surface and that the club should go over to hard courts. Six-foot high fencing was erected around the whole site, and the first court constructed. The cost of the work was mainly funded by grants and loans, with the balance coming out of club funds. By the end of that year, there were seventy-two members and £76 in the funds; by the end of 1979 these figures had increased to 120 and £630. Membership had fluctuated in the intervening years, but the club’s financial position remained sound, enabling it to contribute to the cost of the second and third hard courts (in 1975 and 1980) and to meet the whole cost of erecting a clubhouse and storage shed in 1976. These buildings heralded the club’s formal move from Silver Street to the new site, which was now held on a twenty-one-year lease from the Parish Council. Throughout the decade, the club continued to enter teams in the local leagues, often meeting with success. Two more trophies were donated for internal club competitions: the Romulus Cup for mixed pairs (1971), and the Peter Smith Cup for men’s pairs (1979). This pattern of consolidation and improvement of facilities and success in external competitions continued through the 1980s, with membership reaching over 250 shortly after the club celebrated its first fifty years in 1984. The surround fencing, renewed to between nine and twelve feet high, was augmented on the car park side by a conifer hedge. The three existing courts were resurfaced, and a fourth constructed in 1989. A perimeter drainage system was excavated. Two new trophies were donated: the Caroline and Andrew Pook Shield for under-12s singles, and the Park Cup, which replaced the Romulus Cup for mixed pairs. The club’s league successes included divisional wins and promotions for several teams, and the lifting of the Don Brace Cup in 1985. In 1989 the club and the parish council entered into a second twenty-one-year lease. The 1990s brought both successes and frustrations. Buckden continued to shine in league competitions, with the club becoming the first ever to have three teams playing in the top division in the same season. In 1993 the ladies won the final of the Grays k/o Cup, and the mixed team the Don Brace Cup (again). A new internal trophy, the Albert Dudley Memorial Cup, was donated for mixed veterans pairs. The planned expansion of the club facilities, however, ran into difficulties, practical and legal. As a result, an ambitious project to extend the clubhouse and floodlight courts three and four required four years and fifteen meetings to reach completion. In the end, all came good and in 1997 a new (rather than extended) clubhouse was officially opened by the then Prime Minister, John Major, in the presence of local and league dignitaries and many members. (Courts one and two had to wait until 2005 to be floodlit.) A feature of the early years of the new century has been the club’s success in attracting young players. The need for this became clear in 2001, when the under-12s singles competition had to be cancelled for lack of entries. The following year saw the first Saturday morning ‘Fun Hour’, when the courts were set aside for any youngster, member or not, wanting to play or practice. This continues to be popular, with some Saturdays having as many as fifty participants. Coaching sessions and a summer camp have helped build up a strong junior presence. The 2005 season, for example, saw three boys teams entered in the National Club Junior League, and two boys win through to the regional finals of the Road to Wimbledon National 14 and Under Challenge. Further encouragement came with the donation of the Norman Poulter Trophy for the most improved junior member. It is a mark of the dedication of so many members and hard-working officials that nearly 70% of the £114,000 spent on the projects described has been met from club funds. Maurice Pepper Theatre Club: see drama in Buckden. The Gables, High Street [MapRef 19], was erected some time between 1903 and 1910 by George Page, one of the area’s most respected builders, as his family home. It was (and still is) what one would expect from a successful Edwardian businessman: a substantial detached house in gault brick with red brick banding, complete with cellar, stableyard, large gardens and tennis court. The kitchen still has the original servants’ bell panel (although we know of only one live-in servant, eighteen-year old Florrie Kent, the step-daughter of a horse keeper on a farm in Mr Page's home village of Hail Weston). The house stands to the east of Buckden roundabout, where the High Street joins the A1. In the 1900s, the Perry