Buckden, Cambridgeshire - St. Marys Church - Frith RP postcard c.1950s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  St. Mary's Church, Buckden [Huntingdonshire, now Cambridgeshire]
• Publisher: Frith ltd. (BKN.21)
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
• Postmark(s): n/a
• Sent to:  n/a
• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Buckden is a village and civil parish 3.7 miles (6.0 km) north of St Neots and 4 miles (6.4 km) south-west of Huntingdon. It lies in Huntingdonshire, a non-metropolitan district of Cambridgeshire as well as a historic county of England. The small hamlets of Stirtloe and Hardwick are also in the parish. Buckden is situated close to three major transport networks. The River Great Ouse forms the eastern boundary of the parish; the Great North Road used to pass through the centre of the village, although today there is a bypass just to the west; the East Coast Mainline runs along the eastern side of the Great Ouse river valley in the neighbouring parish of The Offords.

Buckden is the location of Buckden Towers (or Buckden Palace), one of the many former residences of the Bishop of Lincoln. In the Middle Ages the diocese of Lincoln extended almost to London, so Buckden lay somewhere near to the middle of the diocese. A house was built by the mid-12th century, where the bishop of Lincoln held court, but this was burnt down in 1291 and then re-built. Further re-building and extending of the palace took place in the 15th century, including the addition of the red brick tower^[7] which is of the same design as Tattershall Castle in Lincolnshire,^[39] although the tower at Buckden has only four storeys. Buckden Palace also accommodated Catherine of Aragon for a short time before she was moved to Kimbolton Castle. The palace was neglected in the first half of the 17th century. A survey in 1647 listed the building and features, which included a Great Chamber, a chapel, a brick tower, and a gatehouse; all were inclosed by a moat. The grounds contained at least four fishponds and there were about 200 deer in the deer park.^[7]

Huntingdonshire was transferred from the diocese of Lincoln to the diocese of Ely in 1837, and Buckden Palace was also transferred. A number of parts of the palace were demolished during the 19th century, and many of the parts that remained were used by the local vicar and a school. In 1848, the palace was described as a "venerable structure".^[40] The palace passed into private ownership in 1870 and was renamed Buckden Towers. The Victorian house that is currently on the site was built in 1872.

Between 1914 and 1919, Buckden Towers was used as a Red Cross hospital and during the Second World War as a home for evacuees from the London blitz. After the war, Buckden Towers was given to the Roman Catholic church and in 1956 the Towers went to the Claretian missionaries, who carried out some restoration work and built a Catholic church for the village.^[41]

The site of the original Palace is designated an ancient monument and the Victorian Buckden Towers is a Grade II listed building; the Inner Gatehouse, the Curtain Wall and the Towers of the earlier Buckden Palace are all Grade I listed buildings. In addition to these and the former coaching inns, there are over 60 other listed buildings in the parish of Buckden, mainly located around Buckden Towers.^[42] Much of the centre of the village around Buckden Towers, along the High Street and Church Street has been designated a Conservation Area by Huntingdonshire District Council.^[39]

To the east of the village in the Great Ouse river valley there are a number of small lakes where gravel pits used to be worked. The enclosure map of 1813 shows the position of one gravel pit and another is shown on an Ordnance Survey map of 1926; but it was not until the 1960s that large-scale gravel and sand extraction took place. Sand and gravel were needed for two major local construction projects; the dual carriageway of the A1 road and the dam at Graham Water.^[7] In 1986, the gravel pits at Buckden covered 400 acres (160 hectares).^[43] Buckden Marina was constructed in a small disused gravel pit close to the Great Ouse.