Royal celebrations

THE TOWN COUNCIL has called a meeting for later this month to organise celebrations for two forthcoming royal occasions, the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton who are to be married at Westminster Abbey in April, and the Queen‘s Diamond Jubilee in June next year. Local organisations, groups and individuals, are being invited to pool their ideas in order that Bourne can ensure that celebrations will be as memorable as they have been in the past.

One of the biggest royal wedding celebrations to be observed in the town marked the marriage of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, and Princess Alexandra of Denmark at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, on 10th March 1863, an event which set the standard for future royal festivities in Bourne.

Preparations began weeks before and the church bells started to peal early in the morning and soon houses and shops were decorated with flags, banners, flowers and foliage. Members of the Volunteers, the local military unit, held a shooting match for a challenge medal at their rifle range before marching to the Angel Hotel for lunch.

Afterwards, a parade assembled for a procession around the town, headed by the Volunteers with their own brass band, and returning to the market place where everyone sang the national anthem and marksmen fired a feu de joie or celebration volley.

It was now time for the children to join in the fun and 860 boys and girls marched along South Street to the meadow alongside the Bourne Eau (now the Wellhead Gardens) where each was given a large bun, nuts and oranges before joining in games and amusements that had been arranged for them.

By 4 pm, the adults began to take their places in a large booth that had been erected in the market place for a celebration meal, men at one end and women at the other. Dinner was served to 570 men consisting of roast and boiled beef and mutton, plum pudding and ale while the 540 women were given hot cake and tea.

This was a curious arrangement by today’s standards but appears to have been the custom of the time because a local newspaper reported: “The serving of the dinner and tea were admirably managed and in most respects the arrangements were satisfactory.” Afterwards, everyone toasted the health of the Prince and Princess of Wales and thanks were given to those who had helped make the day of celebrations such a success.

Elsewhere in the town there was further rejoicing, notably at the workhouse where the inmates were treated to a meal of roast beef and plum pudding and in the evening, the organisers of the day’s celebrations attended a sumptuous supper in the large room at the Angel Hotel followed by various toasts and the singing of the national anthem at midnight. The Prince of Wales later became Edward VII on the death of his mother, Queen Victoria, in 1901, and he and Alexandra had five children, three girls and two boys, among them the future King George V.

There has only been one previous Diamond Jubilee celebration which was held when the country marked Queen Victoria’s sixty year reign on Tuesday 22nd June 1897. The weather was perfect, so hot that many people carried umbrellas to shade them from the sun, and the town was ablaze with colour, national flags adorned every property, the streets were festooned with red, white and blue bunting while the front of the Town Hall was a mass of patriotic decorations.

A public holiday had been declared and so the shops and businesses were closed and families turned out in their Sunday best to stroll around, greet old friends, stop and gossip, mostly about the grand old lady who had been on the throne for sixty years and would be celebrating her 80th birthday two years later.

There were special services at all of the town’s churches where ministers preached sermons on patriotism and loyalty to one’s country, followed by a day of celebration and enjoyment for both young and old for this special day that had been long anticipated.

“Children were jubilant from daybreak till long after the legitimate bedtime”, reported one local newspaper, “and veterans of 70 and 80 were early astir. There was no home undecorated and many were remarkably beautiful with red roses, evergreens, flags and patriotic emblems. There appeared to have been a happy rivalry in transforming the old Saxon town into a place of beauty.”

The town was full of people for the rest of the day and at three o’clock, 1,000 schoolchildren gathered in the Market Place to sing God Save the Queen. The town band then struck up the national anthem to mark the start of a grand parade with the Volunteers resplendent in their uniforms and medals close behind and followed by the friendly societies, always evident on public occasions carrying their colourful banners.

They all marched through the streets to the Abbey Lawn followed by a huge crowd of people ready to begin the celebrations consisting of a children’s treat of tea and buns, a programme of sports, a cycle parade, a supper for the adults in the evening followed by dancing and fireworks at dusk in the Wellhead Field.

To end the day, there was a torchlight procession to Stamford Hill on the outskirts of the town where, at the highest point, a huge bonfire that had been days in the making, some 20 feet in height, was lit to coincide with others across Lincolnshire and indeed, the entire country. “It was lighted precisely at ten o’clock”, reported the newspaper, “and the flaming tongues that flaked the night must have formed a beacon far across the fenland towards the sea. From near the bonfire could be seen the fires at Spalding and Crowland, and lights in the direction of Gosberton, Pinchbeck, Littleworth, Boston and Peterborough, were discernible. From beginning to end, the proceedings passed off with perfect success.”