Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

80 apprenticed to tailor Thomas James and, after the latter’s death, took over his house and business. In celebrating their diamond wedding anniversary in 1941, the Hunts Post said that Mr Wyles was a retiring man who enjoyed a game of bowls but did not play a large part in community affairs. This is a little unfair: as one of the Odd Fellows’ representatives he helped to organise the annual Buckden Friendly Societies’ Athletic Sports Day. Mr and Mrs Wyles were both born in 1858; Mary died in 1944 and William in 1947. Their son, an apprentice tailor, had died young. Their daughter Amelia (Millie), a schoolteacher, also predeceased them; when young, she had been considered ‘a very good little actress’, showing ‘unmistakeable dramatic ability’ in entertainments put on by the National School. Her most admired performance was as Lady Fiona the Fanciful Lady in Harriet Louisa Childe-Pemberton’s satirical duologue Shattered Nerves (1899). Y year of the sales: 1919. Remarkably, this year saw four of Buckden’s most important properties up for auction: on 31 May, ‘an old-fashioned house’ with 84 acres, The Coneygarth’s (sic); on 26 July, the ‘unusually attractive modern freehold residence’ Buckden Towers, complete with thirteen bed and dressing rooms, one bath, and ‘the intensely interesting ruins of the ancient Episcopal Palace’; and on 30 August, two ‘old-fashioned country residences’, The Red House (two water closets and an ‘ornamental garden, most prettily laid out’) and The Manor House (‘cowhouse and other convenient buildings’). The Towers was bought by Dr R. H. Edleston (q.v.), and Coneygarths was bought by Mr P. W. Priestley, who moved there from The Red House. ‘Yes, We Have No Bananas’ was sung at the opening of one Women’s Institute (q.v.) meeting in the 1920s. It was the hit song from a current Broadway revue. The WI has never been as out-of-touch as its metropolitan critics like to think. York House, High Street [MapRef 29], is a substantial town-house built in the 18thC (a chimney brick carries the date 1785). Further research is needed to establish when the name was first used and to what it relates. It seems too prosperous a residence to have been the home of the Yorke (sometimes York) family, who had a small butcher’s shop nearby: see the next entry. A Charles Yorke Seawell, gentleman, lived in Buckden High Street in the mid-Victorian years, but south of the George Inn. Among those known to have lived in York House are Sir William Power, Mayor of Hackney 1928-9, and his wife Cornelia Frances. To be more precise, the only record of their having lived there is that they both died there: she on 23 February 1944 and he on 10 June 1945. The previous occupants had been Edward and Martha Cranfield-Rose. York Yard, High Street, once known as Brickyard Lane (q.v.) is, curiously, next door not to York House but to Sherwood House. A correspondent writing on the Buck- den village website suggests that the yard is named after his ancestor William Yorke, a Northamptonshire-born butcher known to have been in Buckden before moving to Bedfordshire. The family business apparently continued in that county for another hundred years. The family’s progress was not quite as smooth as this description suggests. In August 1826, the creditors of ‘William Yorke, late of Buckden, Huntingdonshire, butcher’ were invited to a meeting in Huntingdon to sort out the distribution of his estate and effects: William was an insolvent debtor, newly discharged from confinement in the King’s Bench Prison, London. Despite this setback, a William Yorke, butcher, contin- ues to appear in Buckden directories for both 1830 and 1839. After that there are no Yorkes or Yorks listed. How- ever, the 1841 census places one of the village’s several butchers, Robert Setchell, at or near the entrance to York Yard, and these premises remained in use as a butcher’s shop into the 20thC. It seems likely, therefore, that this was indeed the site of the Yorkes’ business. Z Zachariah was the first forename of Pc Coulson, Buckden’s policeman in the years running up to the First World War. He was born in about 1876, the son of a Hilton farm bailiff, and started his working life as a farm labourer before joining the police. ‘Zachariah’ is a sufficiently uncommon name to confuse transcribers of the census, where he may be found under such diverse identities as ‘Tachwinh Coulson’ and ‘Lacharial Coulson’. As his service in Buckden coincided with the St Neots magistracy’s ruthless war on speeding, ‘Coulson’ was no doubt often preceded by even less flattering epithets in the mouths of those caught in the notorious Buckden police trap (q.v.). Zombies,The This well-regarded British rock or ba- roque pop band was founded in 1959 and disbanded in 1968 (although some of the original members began to tour again in 2005). The band’s drummer was the landlord of The Vine for a time at the end of the last century. ΩΩΩΩΩ An unidentified family. The photograph was with some others from Buckden. David Thomas