William Thomas Buckland

William Thomas Buckland
William Thomas Buckland (1798–1870)
Born	5 September 1798 Wraysbury, Berkshire, England
Died	1 November 1870 Wraysbury, Berkshire, England
Occupation(s)	surveyor and auctioneer
Spouse	Mary Wood
Parent(s)	Thomas Buckland and Ann Virgoe

William Thomas Buckland was born on 5 September 1798 in

While he was at school in Camberwell, in 1812, his father died, leaving six children, of whom he was the youngest. He left school in July of the following year. His apprenticeship, near Reading, was a 'hard bondage', of which he spoke often in remembrance of its bitterness. In 1820 he became a freeman of the City of London, and commenced business on Holborn bridge.^[4]

Survey and Auctioneering work

In 1828 he founded the firm Buckland Surveyors and Auctioneers, later Messrs Buckland and Sons at

In September 1850, W T Buckland and his son Thomas began conducting sales of livestock in a field belonging to the North Star Inn near the Great Western Road Railway Station in Slough. They began by holding sales on the first Tuesday of every month. This soon increased to every other Tuesday then finally every Tuesday. The market continued to be run by Buckland and Sons until it finally closed in December 1988.^[6]

By Royal Appointment

One of the annual highlights for the firm was the Christmas sale of stock from the

Wraysbury Baptist Chapel

In 1862, G.W.J. Gyll wrote a description of William Thomas Buckland, including his role in the establishment of the Wraysbury Baptist Chapel:^[3]

A yeoman and a worthy man, useful and excellent in all the duties of life and no less famed for an agriculturist than land guager and auctioneer. ... He presides in his own chapel, a Baptist one, where he preaches fearlessly and revelations of his Heavenly Master, and enforces his doctrine by a strict moral and religious life. This service he has faithfully fulfilled for 35 years. He has visited the sick and read to them, and succoured them in their spiritual necessity, when the clergyman non-resident has been absent, and this without fee or reward, feeling that the pleasure he had in doing it paid itself; laying up for himself a treasure which neither moth nor rust can corrupt.

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