The weekly market

THE MARKET PLACE is the centre of most small towns and has been for centuries, a place where people meet to gossip, celebrate national and local events and to buy their food from farmers and often to sell their own wares. Many are marked with a stone obelisk, also known as a butter cross, but most have been dismantled because of the danger created by modern traffic and the one in Bourne disappeared some time after 1803.

Bourne market place was situated at the crossroads where the two main roads serving the town, east to west and north to south, intersect. Regular trading took place here from the earliest times and in 1279, a royal charter was granted to the Lord of the Manor, Baldwin Wake, giving him permission to hold a market. These manorial rights enabled him to levy tolls and this authority was passed down through the centuries to South Kesteven District Council which has run the market and collected the rents since 1974.

Until 1990, stalls were erected on the streets when the danger from passing traffic became apparent after a lady shopper was hit by a lorry and the council decided to move them to a safer location, a specially paved area behind the Town Hall where it remains to this day. The original charter stipulated a Saturday market and this tradition has continued although a Thursday market was later added and this has become the more popular of the two.

The market is now strictly regulated and has usually gone by mid-afternoon but in past times it was a noisy and sometimes riotous event with a great deal of drinking in the local public houses which stayed open all day. In 1924, for instance, residents living in the vicinity complained about the late hour of closing on Saturday nights and demanded that the stalls be taken down at 10 pm in order that they could get some sleep.

The market place today