Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

74 typed on a Patria portable typewriter bought through a salesman who called at the WVS office. She had a study in the garden at the family home in Brampton Road where she could write undisturbed. Her father worked at home as an accountant and used the dining room table for his business so ‘they always ate in the kitchen’. The Women’s Institute was a long-term interest of Miss Turk. At various times she was President of the Buckden branch or its delegate to the national conferences and also Voluntary County Organiser. In later years she came into the village to live at the Burberry Homes, and for the last months of her life moved to Rose Cottage at Broughton. turnpikes. A turnpike road was one run by a trusts whose costs were met by fees charged at toll-gates. See Chapter 18 for a description of the turnpiked road that ran through Buckden. U Union Chapel, High Street [MapRef 34]. This small place of non-conformist worship was built in what had been the backyard of a public house, the Falcon, which was sold and closed down in about 1840. In the 1861 census it is referred to as ‘the Primitive Methodists’ Chapel’. Over the years the congregation dwindled and in 1862 the chapel had to be closed. In the summer of 1905 the congregation celebrated the renovation of the chapel and the erection of a new schoolroom; the pastor at the time was the Rev. Hurditch (q.v.). The Rev. Cornelius Mensink was in charge of the Buckden pastorate (it included Spaldwick) between 1923 and 1926 (see also under motorcycles ). He was succeeded by the Rev. W. Smith, who left in 1929. A later pastor was the Rev. C. E. Duffy, who left in 1936. The building remained in religious use as a joint Baptist and Congregational chapel until 1984, when it was converted to a contract furnishings showroom. A plaque dedicated to four men of the congregation who died in the First World War was removed during renovations in 2000 and taken to Trinity Baptist Church, Perry. In 2006, the chapel was converted to a house, The Old Chapel. Usher family . This large and long-established family was at the heart of Buckden life for over 200 years, both commercially – as shopkeepers, skilled tradesmen and beer-sellers – and as holders of public offices, such as parish clerk or collector of taxes. V vaccination. Parental concerns about ‘jabs’ are nothing new. Vaccination against smallpox first became compulsory in 1853; from 1867, parents and guardians could be repeatedly fined for refusing to have their children vaccinated. This severe approach caused public unease: many people felt that children should not be exposed to the associated risks, especially as the alarming array of symptoms caused by a vaccination sore gone wrong - snuffles, thrush, nodes on the head, bubo in the armpit, phagedaenic sores, abscesses and eruption on the infant’s genitals – included some that suggested that some vaccine might be contaminated with syphilis. A Royal Commission was appointed to review all aspects of vaccination. This took so long that a fifth of its members had died before it issued its final report in 1896/7. However, the government responded swiftly with the Vaccination Act 1898, which included a provision whereby people could obtain an exemption if they satisfied the local magistrates that they ‘conscientiously believed’ that vaccination would be prejudicial to the health of their child. This part of the act came into force in August 1898. One of the first people to seek an exemption certificate was Buckden market gardener John Leaden (of Leadens Lane). In October, the St Neots bench accepted his application, which was based on the fact that vaccination had caused one of his children to break out in sores. The child in respect of whom he sought the exemption was a son, Joseph Herbert. Sadly, the boy died early the next year – but of bronchitis, not smallpox. He was six months old. Curiously, 33% more children were vaccinated in the year after the new Act than in the year before: exemption applied: confirmation, perhaps, of the Victorians’ resistance to being bullied by government into doing something that most of them were reasonably happy to do of their own free will. Valency House, 14 High Street, is a Grade II listed 18thC house. The name is relatively new: it was previously known as Sunnyside. Unusually for Buckden, the house stands at right angles to the street: most people of the time rich enough to build a substantial house preferred to present its façade to the passing world. It emphasised their new status. Valley, The. The preferred name for the conservation area south of Manor Gardens and west of the playing- fields. The stretch of water that forms its main feature is known as the Lake; to call it a pond in the hearing of a Buckden resident is to invite a sharp correction. On the other hand, to call it the Canal (q.v.) shows one is aware that there is more than one theory about its origins. Vellacott, George Harold (1920-2008). ‘Buckden man’s name will live on in London’ said the local paper in November 1989. The man was George Vellacott OBE MA, holder of the Housing Corporation and National Federation of Housing Associations Certificate in Housing Association Finance and Administration. Mr Vellacott settled in Manor Gardens in 1983 and became active in village affairs, joining the Village Hall Trust, the British Legion and the Parish Council; he was particularly interested in the parochial charities. A varied life before coming to Buckden had included Second World War service in Burma with the Royal Engineers, 20 years with the Church Missionary Society in Nigeria and 20 years with the Postgraduate Medical School at Hammersmith Hospital, first as its secretary and then, from 1972, as the project manager for the Ducane Housing Association. The Association was set up to purchase and develop nearby land to provide accommodation for the hospital’s postgraduate students and their families, an aim that had been unsuccessfully pursued for many years but was finally achieved with the opening of five residential blocks in 1976-77. A further block was opened in 1989 and named Vellacott House.