 acres) by 1980. (fn. 71) During the following decade the Society began to sell farms to sitting tenants and by 1992 the estate was reduced to 1,877 acres. (fn. 72) As well as a reduction in the number of farms, the half-century after 1944 also saw some amalgamation of fields, although less markedly so than in some parishes in the district. In the 1970s the Society bought the bed of the disused Buckingham branch of the Grand Union Canal, most of which was absorbed into adjoining farms, apart from a short stretch which was acquired by the Northamptonshire Naturalists' Trust as a nature reserve. When the amenity woodland in hand was affected by Dutch elm disease in the early 1980s the Society replanted the spinneys with hardwoods to maintain the traditional appearance of the estate. (fn. 73)
As soon as they acquired a group of estates within reasonable travelling distance of each other in the South Midlands, the Society of Merchant Venturers made regular tours to inspect their property, under the guidance of their 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 particu