eir land steward. Members of the Society met the tenants, attended church services, and took part in social functions, including cricket matches between the tenants of Wicken and Mentmore. From time to time the tenants were invited back to Bristol to see something of the work of the St. Monica Trust. (fn. 74) As the number of tenants fell over the years, along with the Society's acreage in the parish, and the village lost the unity it had once possessed as a community where everyone depended on the fortunes of a single estate, the style of management became less paternal, although in the 1990s the Society continued to make tours of Wicken and its other remaining properties.
The sale of the cottages and a decline in agricultural employment after the Second World War led to a gradual change in the character of the village, as the older houses were modernised and increasingly from the 1960s became the homes of professional and business people who worked elsewhere, principally Milton Keynes. Wicken proved particularly attractive for such people, since it was within easy reach of the new town but away from any main road and protected by planning policy against large-scale development. Small groups of council houses were built in the village from 1948 (fn. 75) and in the 1970s and 1980s a limited number of high-status private houses were added to the built-up area. During the same period the range of retail and commercial services-never extensive-declined further, although the former rectory was successfully converted into a Japanese restaurant and hotel. The school closed in 1962. (fn. 76)
In 1290 John son and heir of John, who was the son of John son of Alan, lord of Wick Hamon, was allowed to re-inclose his park at Wicken after it had fallen into decay during the time that his mother Isabel had held it in dower. (fn. 77) In 1404 Richard Woodville, then lord of Wick Hamon, made a grant of all the underwood in Wick Park to William Furtho and two others, who were to make a fence round the park at their expense. (fn. 78) A century later, in 1512, Sir John Spencer was granted licence to impark 300 a. of land and 200 a. of wood at Wicken: (fn. 79) even if these figures are notional, they suggest a considerable enlargement of the medieval park and also point to the survival of woodland in this part of the parish, as the survey made for Charles Hosier in 1717 also indicates. (fn. 80) In 1604 Robert Lord Spencer received a confirmation of the grant of 1512, which was confirmed again in 1639. (fn. 81) In about 1651, however, the 2nd earl of Sunderland disparked Wicken, when Sir Peter Temple Bt., an ancestor of the dukes of Buckingham and Chandos, purchased the deer for his new park a few miles away at Stowe (Bucks.). (fn. 82) By 1717 much of the park had been divided into closes, although a large area of lawn survived to the north of the keeper's lodge, as well as the woodland to the west, and a broad avenue which ran roughly south-east from the lodge for over a mile, through the park and the common-field arable near the Ouse to the parish boundary, crossing both branches of the road to Buckingham. (fn. 83)
Charles Hosier, who bought the Wicken estate in 1716, commissioned a detailed survey the following year, when he also built a new house adjoining the keeper's lodge in the former park. (fn. 84) Either Hosier (who died in 1750) or his immediate successor Thomas Prowse (died 1767) re-established a park around the house, on less formal (and possibly less extensive) lines than its predecessor, with stretches of grassland (some of it recovered from closes taken out of the old park), extending on all sides from the house. A broad belt of woodland was retained to the west of the mansion but the avenue was completely swept away. (fn. 85)
Few changes appear to have been made to the park between the early 19th century and the Second World War, when much of the land was ploughed up and remained in agricultural use after 1945. (fn. 86) After the war the mansion, including outbuildings and grounds, were let to a private school. (fn. 87)
There 