Dr Charles William Buck (1851-1932) was born in Kirkgate, Settle, the son of Richard Hardacre Buck and his second wife, Grace. He attended Giggleswick School, and then studied medicine at Owen’s College in Manchester and in London, before qualifying as a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1875.
Returning to Settle in 1878, he set up as a general practitioner in a handsome Georgian building on the north side of the market square in Settle (now known as Dr Buck’s House). Buck had bought his practice from Dr James Hartley, junior partner of Dr William Altham, an eminent local family that produced a number of doctors. As his practice grew, Dr Buck took surgeon Richard Ernest Williamson into partnership. According to the 1881 census, Dr Williamson was living in lodgings in Chapel Street, but he appears to have left Settle by 1891, and by 1896 was Medical Officer and Public Vaccinator for the Lymm district in Cheshire. Dr Buck continued to run the surgery with qualified assistants until he retired in 1907, although he continued to own the practice until 1916, when Dr Arthur Lovegrove took over.
The surgery also acted as a dispensary and Dr Buck was well known for preparing his own medicines. The 1891 census shows Henry Bowman Shepherd (nephew of one of the founders of Shepherd & Walker, Chemists, in Settle) living on the premises and acting as his assistant at that time. Charles Buck was a highly respected figure, noted for his devotion to his patients.
Emma Buck (right) with children Morton and Monica Buck and family friends, around 1895.
In August 1884, Charles married Emma Foote Beare at St Leonard’s Church, Streatham and they moved to his parents’ home, Cravendale, on Belle Hill in Giggleswick. Their son, Morton, was born there in March 1886 and the young family then moved back to live above the surgery on the Market Place, where their daughter Monica was born in 1893. Within a few hours of her birth, she was christened in the bedroom by the Rev R C Garnett, which would indicate that she was not initially expected to survive, although she in fact lived until 1980. Emma Buck died in 1902. In 1904, Charles Buck married Ella Margaret Watkins, the daughter of Frederick Watkins, the Archdeacon of York and canon of York Minster. Charles and Ella moved to York to live near her widowed stepmother. Following Ella’s death three years later, Charles Buck returned to his old family home in Giggleswick to semi-retirement. He devoted himself to his music and also had wide-ranging antiquarian interests. He remained active in a number of Settle’s groups and societies well into later life. The house on Market Place passed to his daughter Monica on his death in 1934,
Buck was a gifted amateur musician. He was fascinated by folk music, especially the local Pace Egging Song. He conducted the orchestra of the Settle Amateur Dramatic Society, which later became the Settle Amateur Operatic Society, performing on the stage of the Victoria Hall. He led the Settle Amateur String Band and was on the committee of Settle Choral Society. He was an inveterate pipe-smoker, even when playing his cello. His daughter Monica recalled how she would clean and re-fill with tobacco up to two dozen of his pipes every day. Buck had the the door to the room where he practised altered to allow the pipe smoke to escape through a row of holes, which could be closed by a sliding metal strip.
Buck first met Edward Elgar in Worcester at the British Medical Association jubilee conference in Worcester in 1882, when he played his cello in the orchestra conducted by Elgar, possibly at the behest of Buck’s brother in law, John Beare, an instrument maker who knew Elgar’s father. The two young men bonded over their love of music, the countryside and dogs. Within weeks of their first meeting, Elgar had accepted an invitation to visit Settle, first to Cravendale and later, and very regularly until at least 1900, to the house on the Market Place. The two maintained a lifelong correspondence. Fifty years later, Elgar wrote, it was “a lovely time … the first of many adventures.” He relished his memory of the taste of grilled Ribble trout, adding that “nothing so good in eating or company has occurred to me since 1882”.
Charles Buck died on 22 November 1932, following a prolonged period in which he suffered from liver failure. He is buried, with his first wife and son Morton, in Giggleswick churchyard.