Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

73 one of their properties was the George Inn (q.v.). See also the Mitre. Throckmorton, Robert (c. 1662-1699) was one of the MPs for Huntingdonshire 1698-1699. Born in America, he lived in Stirtloe from the late 1680s until 1693, when he bought, and moved to, the manor of Little Paxton. He was a member of the ‘Country’ Party (forerunner of the Whigs) but ‘left little, if any, impression on the House [of Commons]’. Thurlow, Thomas (1737-91) was – at times simultaneously – Master of the Temple, Dean of St Paul’s and Bishop of Lincoln (1779-87), after which he became Bishop of Durham. It was said the qualities that carried him to such high office in the church were ‘great energy and vast legal talent’; only they weren’t his own, they were those of his brother the Lord Chancellor. There seems to be no record of what he thought of Buckden, but in June 1780 he probably wished he was there rather than in London: he got caught up in the Gordon Riots and had to escape from the mob by scrambling across the rooftops disguised as a woman. Tollington School. The boys from this North London school were evacuated from to Buckden for the first few years of the Second World War. Staff and pupils were billeted with families around the village, but met for lessons in the Towers. For vivid descriptions of what it was like to be an evacuee, see the articles by Alan Cockburn, Alec Owen and Harold Randall in Chapter 17. Top Farm, west of the A1, was the site of a decoy airfield during the Second World War. This was not a comfortable role to play, but the original alternative sought by the USAAF – to plough it up and lay a real airfield – might have been even more traumatic in the long as well as the short term. Buckden was fortunate that the ministers of food and agriculture successfully argued that land of such productive quality would best serve the nation by feeding it. town. Buckden has usually been called a village, although sometimes in a way that suggested it was bordering on being a small town (‘A large and respectable village’ – Cassey’s Directory 1862; ‘A large and populous village’ – Post Office Directory 1854). Some legal documents, such as the agreements listed in the minute books of the early 18thC turnpike trust, speak of the ‘town of Bugden’. Residents would occasionally refer to it as a town: the first field at the east end of the village was called ‘Town’s End Close’, and in an 1864 court case a man mentioned meeting his son ‘coming from the town’. But in both cases ‘town’ clearly meant the built-up area of the village as opposed to the surrounding countryside. It came as something of a surprise, therefore, in March 2001 when the Parish Council was told that under English Heritage’s ‘Extensive Urban Survey’, Buckden had been designated one of Cambridgeshire's thirty historic towns . Not all residents were happy with this – not because it seemed historically wrong but for a more practical reason: a house in a village is a more desirable residence (i.e., worth more) than the same house would be in a town. Estate agents will be relieved to know that at the time of writing (2009), Buckden is still officially a village. Town’s End Close was a field beyond Oak Lawn, the most easterly house in the village. Paradoxically the next, evenmore easterly piece of land, was called theHome Field. Travill, Susannah was a 17thC benefactress (see under charities ). She is not to be confused with Susannah Travel, a lady of ‘no questionable character’ who in 1830 was convicted at Huntingdon Assizes of stealing £22 from farmer Thomas Gale, and sentenced to transportation for life (and possibly to a reunion with her husband, who had been transported some years previously). tribunals, local military. A grim feature of life during the First WorldWar, these tribunals assessed whether men were undertaking civilian work of sufficient importance to the war effort to justify their being given total or partial exemption from military service. In one week in 1916, there were nine cases from Buckden alone. Most applications to tribunals were from employers seeking to retain essential workers; in the case of family businesses, as many were, this often meant a father or mother pleading to save their son. Sometimes applicants sought exemption for themselves. At one such hearing, a Buckden tradesman successfully argued that, much as he would like to answer the call to arms, he was the only man in the village with his particular, vital skills. This drew a sharp response in the following week’s newspaper from another Buckden resident who pointed out that he, too, had the same skills (albeit as an employee rather than self-employed) and being past military age was not liable to be called up, so ‘Mr S------ need hesitate no longer to put himself at the disposal of his country.’ The tribunals were no respecters of persons: a lady of the Duberly family appeared before an appeal panel to argue the case for retaining a young horse-keeper and was told in no uncertain terms that she had no idea of what she was talking about. trouble at’ mill: see explosion. Turk, Frances (1915-2004) . Not every village can say that it had an author of sixty or more published novels living within its bounds for most of her life. The books were written in long-hand, and nearly all were published by Wright and Brown from the 1930s down to 1969. Copies of fifty-nine of her titles may be seen in the Local History Reserve of Huntingdon Library. Ulverscroft large print editions are also to be found. In general they may be described as romantic novels. Miss Turk came to Buckden in 1925 with her parents and lived in Lucks Cottage for a year while the new bungalow in Brampton Road was being completed and its well commissioned. She was old enough to attend Huntingdon Grammar School and did so until obtaining her school certificate. Thanks to her father she also learnt shorthand and typing and on the strength of these and possibly some paternal influence started work for the electricity supply company office in St Neots to which she cycled daily. She had a number of jobs after that including one at the mill in Godmanchester where Farmers Glory Wheat flakes were made. Later she helped to provide a library service for Buckden: she delivered books driving an Austin 7 van. The Women’s Voluntary Service in Huntingdon employed her on office duties, and from 1940 to 1948 she was Assistant County Secretary for the Huntingdonshire, Cambridgeshire and Ely Women’s Land Army. Miss Turk started writing while she had paid employment. One of her novels ‘Angel Hill’ was written between June and October 1941 and took up about 570 pages of quarto paper. All the corrections were done in the longhand version. When complete the whole was then