Miraculously, it survived without serious damage and when the railway station closed in 1959, it was bought by Bourne United Charities and restored to its original glory for use as a community centre and its colourful exterior remains a tourist attraction, frequently photographed by visitors.

There is a tale that the Red Hall is haunted by the ghost of a grey lady who flits through the rooms of this 17th century mansion on moonlit nights. Stories of the apparition have persisted over the years and for those who do believe in ghosts, perhaps it is that of Lady Catherine, who was so reluctant to leave.

The Domesday Book of 1086 records that there were three water mills in Bourne but there is now only one. Cliffe’s Mill in West Street disappeared in 1910 and Notley’s Mill in Eastgate was demolished in 1973 but Baldock’s Mill in South Street, although no longer grinding corn, continues in its new role as a Heritage Centre.

The present building dates from the early 19th century but stopped working in 1924 and its preservation is entirely due to the Civic Society which acquired the lease in 1981. After long spells of hard work by a dedicated team of volunteers, it has been converted into a small museum of which the town can be justly proud, containing many displays, documents and artefacts relating to our past. In addition, the old water wheel has been removed and a new one installed and is now turning in the mill race to produce electricity for the building and so reduce power costs, an encouraging project in an age of increasing awareness of our environment.

The Town Hall has been the centre of administration in Bourne since it was built in 1821, an imposing building of Portland stone with a façade of twin Doric columns and an outside staircase to the upper floors. The money to build it was raised mainly through public subscriptions and a list of those who contributed hangs in the main chamber. In years past, balls were held here attended by the town’s gentry when the ladies in their fine dresses danced until dawn and horse drawn carriages lined up outside to take them home.

Today, the town council meets here and the district council has offices in the ground floor and until recently it was also used as a courthouse with cells for prisoners in the basement. There was once a wooden clock tower on top of the building but it was destroyed by fire in 1933 when the gas lamp used to illuminate the hands and face overheated. It was never replaced but a new timepiece was installed on the pediment where it can be seen today.

Wake House in North Street dates from the early 19th century and is best known as the birthplace of Charles Worth, son of a local solicitor, on 13th October 1825 and a plaque was placed on the front by English Heritage in 2002 to commemorate this event. The building was later used as council offices and is now the home of the Bourne Arts and Community Trust and more than thirty organisations meet there regularly.

The most popular building in Bourne for meetings and concerts is the Corn Exchange which dates from 1870 when the town had a thriving corn trade and dealers met there regularly to sell their grain. A public hall was included in the original design and has been the venue of varied events including ice skating in 1876 and the first film shows were staged there in 1925 before the town had its own cinema. In 1889, the building was struck by lightning during a thunderstorm but there was no serious damage.
 

The corn trade during the 18th and 19th centuries also resulted in many warehouses being built around the town to store the grain and some survive, recognisable by the distinctive red brick walls and blue slate roofs. There is one in South Street, opposite the Wellhead Gardens, now converted into flats, another in Burghley Street which is to be redeveloped shortly and a third in Cherryholt Road overlooking the river which is used for car auctions.

The imposing building at No 63 West Street is a perfect example of Victorian ostentation, once a red brick farmhouse and grain store until its wealthy owner gave it a Gothic style façade. In 1896, the building became the Bourne Institute devoted to recreation, education and intellectual improvement with a library, snooker room and other amenities. A miniature rifle range was established in the adjoining granary in 1902 and fifty years later, the town's library moved in until the present premises were opened in South Street. In 1975, the Bourne Institute was renamed the Pyramid Club which flourishes today, an organisation owned by its members whose activities are devoted mainly to billiards and snooker.

The imposing Regency mansion at No 46 West Street known as Bourne House was built in 1830 as a family home for the Bell family, latterly Major Cecil Walker Bell, a solicitor and churchwarden at the Abbey Church. When he left the town in 1940, the house was bought by Kesteven County Council and used as dormitory accommodation for evacuees from Hull and after the war the authority converted it into a hostel for maladjusted and problem children, orphans or those from broken homes. The house continued in this role for a quarter of a century until being phased out and after standing empty for some years, it was acquired by property developers who turned it into a complex of retirement homes and maisonettes.

The Tudor Cinema was opened in North Street in 1929 when moving pictures were becoming popular. The first screenings were silent films accompanied by a pianist and the talkies, as they were known, followed in 1931. In those days, there were performances each evening with afternoon matinees for children on Saturdays and during the school holidays. Audiences declined when television arrived and bingo took over and the cinema finally closed in 1989 and is now used as a Chinese restaurant.

The elegant 18th century town house which can be seen in South Street as your enter Bourne is Cavalry House which takes its name from a previous owner, Thomas Rawnsley, a wool stapler, who raised a mounted troop of cavalry in 1794 known as the Lincolnshire Light Horse Rangers to fight Napoleon. The troops were drilled at various places around the town ready to repel an invasion of England but it never came and the unit was disbanded. Captain Rawnsley died in 1826, aged 71, and there is a plaque to his memory in the Abbey Church but it is difficult to see because it has been placed high up on the wall of the north arcade.

The house we know as Brook Lodge was originally built as the vicarage in 1776 by the Rev Humphrey Hyde, who was then Vicar of Bourne, and stands at the end of Church Walk but the frontage is on a dangerous double bend in South Road. It was replaced by a new vicarage in 1879 and has since been used as a doctor's surgery but is now converted into flats. The exterior has been rendered and whitewashed and the building has lost much of its grandeur from past times when the house was the scene of frequent summer garden parties and musical concerts.

The Old Bakehouse in the Austerby is a Tudor mansion almost in its original condition and was once part of the former residence of the Abbots of Bourne and reputedly constructed with stone from Bourne Castle. Part of the building was in more recent times used as a bakery and sales shop, hence its name today, but it retains a wealth of original style and fittings.

Little is recorded of life in the Abbey of Bourne during the first four centuries of its existence but it is known that after its dissolution in 1536, the manor of Bourne Abbots passed into secular hands and eventually came into the possession of the Trollope family early in the 17th century. This gave them considerable land, farms and houses in Bourne, Cawthorpe and Dyke and this historic property may well have been among them.

Dawkins House is a large limestone building in the Spalding Road that was in existence before the 17th century. Until sixty years ago, it was a public house known as the New Inn and the earliest date associated with the property is 1550 when the man thought to have built it, Thomas Dawkins, a tanner, lived in nearby Eastgate, and it would therefore predate the Red Hall by half a century. Little is known of the building except for a few deeds dating from the 19th century and a stone plaque that bears the inscription "Thomas Dawkins Anno Dom. 1666" can be found on an extension built when it was being used as a public house and so the additional space was probably required as a bottle store and as a place to accommodate horses and carts belonging to weary travellers.
 

The Old Maltings in West Street is an imposing building, particularly so because of the mellow red brick and blue slate roof which dates back to the late 18th century. The original building was destroyed by fire in 1790 and rebuilt in 1806 although since then, it has been sympathetically restored for modern business use by later tenants, Boston Tractors Limited in 1968 and particularly the present occupants, Warners Midlands plc which bought the property in 1976 as the headquarters of an expanding colour printing business, now employing more than 300 staff.

The Vestry Hall was built in North Street as a Calvinist chapel in 1867 but the sect fell into debt and was forced to close in 1890. It was later bought by H Company, the 2nd Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment, for use as a drill hall and the unit remained there until early in 1914 when they vacated the premises and in July that year, the building was sold at public auction for £340 to the trustees of the late Thomas Carlton, a former draper of North Street, and made available to the Abbey Church for vestry meetings, hence its present name. During the Great War of 1914-18, the hall was turned into a military hospital and in the second conflict of 1939-45, it became a first aid post and headquarters of the local Home Guard. There were several subsequent uses, as a youth club and a venue for social events, until being sold in 2004 and it has since been turned into a private residence.

Monkstone House at No 12 West Street is among the oldest domestic buildings in the town, the rear part dating from 1620 while the impressive red brick frontage was erected in the mid-18th century and the original doorway incorporating a broken pediment and fanlight still graces the main entrance. The house would doubtless have been occupied by one of the town's more affluent citizens and was later the lifetime home of the late Mr Jack Rayner, a teacher at Bourne Grammar School who died in June 1990 at the age of 73. His speciality was woodwork and he filled the main rooms with intricate wood carvings of foliage and small animals, particularly mice, converting the drab interior into the splendour of a richly decorated Elizabethan home. The house has been used as an Indian restaurant since 1993.