Bourne Diary - March 2000
by
Rex Needle
Baston is one of those attractive villages with a strong sense of community. It has a medley of brick and stone houses, a beautiful mediaeval church that is always open to visitors and a lively parish newsletter that contains more gossip than you will ever hear in the post office on pension day. The floodlights for St John the Baptist Church were switched on at midnight on New Year's Eve and the magnificent 15th century embattled stone tower can now be seen in all of its mellow glory each evening from dusk until 11pm. Saturday 4th March 2000
A new village sign was erected on New Year's Day and so visitors are greeted by a colourful evocation of scenes from the village's past as they drive in while the Baston Environmental Group is one of the busiest in the area, the latest project involving interviews with local people reminiscing about life over the past eighty years, their schooldays, memories of horse drawn carts, the arrival of piped water, electricity and the motor car, the war years and the subsequent influx of newcomers to the village, which will be printed in a booklet due to appear in the spring.
All of these amenities have been paid for by voluntary labour and finance, people who give their time and money to make the village a better place to live in and the community more welcoming. Baston is a blend of the ancient and modern, where peace and self-help is a way of life. It is in fact, the perfect English village but one that does not cling to the past and strives to keep pace with our changing society. It even has a lady vicar and a lady churchwarden and you cannot be more modern than that.
Baston, then, is the last place where you would expect to find the social misfits that plague our society but they are indeed here too and active on Saturday nights after filling up on strong lager and then looking round for something to destroy while primed with their weekly dose of Dutch courage. One of the attractive features of this village was an old farm wagon standing on the grass verge in the main street opposite the family butcher's shop run by Paul Webster. The wagon, built in 1948, had seen decades of use on a local farm and was bought by Mr Webster for £150 four years ago to advertise his business but he looked out of his bedroom window one Sunday morning to find it upside down in the dyke, pushed there during the night by drunks who must have thought it great fun to wreck something that had become a familiar and well-loved feature of the village and then run away and hide and deny all knowledge of their cowardly and criminal act.
But Mr Webster, although angry and disappointed that such mindless vandalism should occur on his doorstep, is undeterred by the setback and is already planning a replacement. He has bought another farm wagon, this time ten years older, for £175 and is currently restoring it and later this year it will be parked on the same spot on the grass verge and so the street scene we have come to know will be restored. It is to be hoped that the hooligans responsible for this wanton damage will show some remorse. Their delinquent behaviour is reprehensible and intolerable for those who live here and it was also a shameful act because it demeans the good name of this ancient village at a time when its residents are striving so hard for peace and harmony in a troubled world.
The churchyard is one of the most endearing features of the English landscape and there are 20,000 of them in England and Wales. They are among the most powerful symbols of shelter in our culture and since the time of their establishment they have been sanctuaries for the living as well as the dead. I believe that a country churchyard is one of the most peaceful spots that can be found today, a place of solitude and contemplation and to read the inscriptions on the tombstones is a reminder of human frailty and the sacrifices of the rural poor in past times and yet the lasting impression they leave is one of continuity and a resilience of life. It is here, as Thomas Gray observed 250 years ago in his evocative poem Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, that "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep" for their lives are perpetuated in stone or slate and some inscriptions tell of the fate that befell them, of lives that were cut short and others whose longevity belies the conditions under which they lived.
The churchyard is a favourite call for amateur genealogists who are busy compiling their family trees because headstones give names and dates of ancestors and are proof that they came from this place and made their mark here. It is a pity that the stone used during the 18th and 19th centuries has not withstood the wind and weather of the passing years and many inscriptions are badly eroded but sufficient survive to provide important research into those who went before.
I am continually being asked by people living abroad and whose ancestors originated in this area to help with their projects and so I always carry in my pocket a list of names to look out for whenever I am visiting a church in the vicinity, many of which appear in the Family History section on the web site, and often I have a small success in finding a reference to someone who will provide yet another entry in a family tree being compiled in another country.
On a gloriously sunny day last week, we drove out into the countryside and found ourselves in Billingborough, a place which we are always delighted to visit for who can resist the appeal of the slender spire of St Andrew's Church soaring 150 feet above the village, a lasting reminder of the faith that has endured here on the very edge of the fens for almost 1,000 years. Billingborough is nine miles north of Bourne and is more of a small town than a village, with a long street of houses, shops and old inns, and although many of the present population are newcomers, there are still old families hereabouts and, more importantly, some of those that are buried in the churchyard are the forebears of sons and daughters who have long since left this land to seek their fortune over the seas.
Last year, Jerry Pepper contacted me from Canada saying that his ancestors Tom and Ann Pepper had emigrated from Lincolnshire in 1876 and he was interested in the places where they were born, Pointon and Braceby, and he later found connections with Billingborough and Horbling, and so we looked for any Peppers we could find as we walked around the churchyard and soon we were standing before a granite headstone bearing that name.
Thomas Pepper, who was born in 1794, had died suddenly, perhaps from an accident, in 1854 while his wife Mary had lived on for another quarter of a century until she too died in 1878 at the age of 86. This couple were obviously Jerry's ancestors, perhaps even his great grand-parents, and I photographed the headstone and copied down the details and sent them off by email to his home in Chatham, Ontario, and so a chance visit to an English churchyard enables another piece of a family jigsaw to fall into place on the other side of the world.
The days are lengthening noticeably and soon it will be spring, a joyous season for us because we delight in the woods and the countryside and to watch them bursting into new life. I have been given my instructions to prepare the bicycles which have been standing idle in the garage all winter and once they are cleaned and oiled we will be pedalling off into the highways and byways of this beautiful part of England to see the hedgerows turning green and the wild flowers splashing their colour over the grass verges. Spring is a time when I ponder on the fragility of life and because I love it so much and am aware of my advancing years, I always wonder if I will live to see the next one but here I am, almost seventy springs on, ready and eager for the delights of yet another. Saturday 11th March 2000
The snowdrops have been with us for some weeks and they are much in evidence in cottage gardens, in the churchyards and the town cemetery. They are the most delicate and beautiful of our early flowers with nodding white heads and a hardiness that belies their appearance. Snowdrops seem to flourish where the dead are buried and there is much superstition about this but the simple explanation is that relatives planted them in years past and bulbous flowers proliferate when their seed is scattered by the scythe or the grass mower.
Crocuses and daffodils abound in our urban areas and parks, wood anemones are just making an appearance in the woodland ways and a profusion of primroses can be found in the churchyard at Irnham. The hedgerows are daubed with white where the blackthorn has burst into blossom and ornamental cherry trees in the streets of Bourne are a riot of pink and white that delight the eye on sunny days. The lesser or small celandine can also be seen at this time of the year while driving out to the villages, in damp and shady places, shyly peeping through the greenery along the moist banks of dykes and streams, its glossy foliage forming a dense carpet. It is one of the very earliest of our spring flowers, its cheery, star-like heads lighting up our roadside verges even before the winter is quite spent.
William Wordsworth recognised the lesser celandine (Ranunculus ficaria) as a harbinger of spring and suggested that the painter who first tried to picture the rising sun must have taken the idea of the spreading, pointed rays from what he called the celandine's "glittering countenance". It became his favourite flower and its blossoms are carved on his tomb and in 1804, while living at Dove Cottage near Grasmere in the Lake District, he wrote:
There is a Flower, the lesser Celandine,
That shrinks, like many more, from cold and rain;
And, the first moment that the sun may shine,
Bright as the sun himself, 'tis out again!These signs all about us of Mother Nature renewing herself for another year also provide reflection for people in other parts of the world and I have just received an email from Japan to remind us that these wonderful days are shared by other people around the globe. Tadato Shimono, aged 63, is a high school teacher who lives in the most southern part of the country in a city called Miyakonojo, in the Miyazaki prefecture, which has a population of about 130,000. "Spring is just around the corner", he writes, "and some of the flowers are already blooming beautifully."
We have exchanged photographs of our localities and both agree that the countryside looks very much the same except that their trees are perhaps more exotic because Japanese apricot, or Ume, blooms in profusion in the grounds of his school and the blossom is a sight to behold. "According to the calendar, it is already spring", he writes, "but it is still cold in the mornings and in the evenings although during the daytime it is often warm enough to imagine that the winter has already gone."
But spare a thought for those who do not enjoy such an early spring. Winnie Nowak, a senior citizen from Anchorage, Alaska, emails me to say that conditions in her neighbourhood are very different. "Our recent weeks have been an absolute disaster", she writes. "The weather continued to buffet us with high winds, heavy snows and freezing rain followed by more snow which has resulted in the worst driving conditions in thirty years. I did not get out of the house for eleven days because I felt it best to stay off the ice."
Winnie, who grew up in this part of Lincolnshire, adds: "Having lived in Alaska for 47 years, we take this in our stride. I have a big freezer as well as a large refrigerator always well stocked and an electric bread making machine and our good neighbours are always willing to pick up some milk." But, like home thoughts from abroad, she remembers her native countryside. "I hear the Lincolnshire weather has been fantastic with daffodils and crocuses all blooming".
It has indeed been one of the mildest winters in living memory and only ten warmer Februaries have been recorded in the past century. Sunshine has been plentiful almost everywhere while south westerly winds brought above-average temperatures and an absence of snow and fog. Now the vernal equinox, which we regard as the first day of spring, is just over a week away and the countryside is waking up and the hedgerows bursting into leaf and soon the woods will take on their green mantle for another year. These are days of great promise and expectation when we wake in the mornings to find the sun streaming in through the windows, it is good to be alive.
A discussion is currently underway among members of South Kesteven District Council that ought never have been on the agenda in the first place. Should they vote openly or in secret?
Whenever people gather to organise events or to run our affairs, the traditional way to vote is by raising the right hand when a motion is moved and in that way everyone can know which way the others vote. The names of those for and against are then recorded in the minutes. This is democracy at work.
I covered council meetings for forty years as a reporter and there was never any doubt that this was the correct way to proceed. In fact, no alternative was ever suggested. But because we are in the electronic age, there is a move to replace the show of hands by a system of pushing buttons. One does not need a degree in civic affairs to realise that this is an outrageous proposition and one that should be thrown out by a majority vote, a show of hands, of course and not by the collective pushing of buttons.
Secrecy in the council chamber is a sign of democracy in decline. Too much business is already conducted behind closed doors and this would be yet another nail in the coffin of accountability by those who we elect to serve us. If push button voting became a permanent feature of the council chamber, we should ask ourselves what do our councillors have to hide?
Wall illustrations have a long and colourful history as a means of recording contemporary places and events. There are many illustrious examples, perhaps the most famous being the Bayeux Tapestry, the linen hanging made between 1067 and 1070 that gives a vivid pictorial record of the invasion of England by William the Conqueror in 1066, containing 72 separate scenes with descriptive wording in Latin and can be seen today in the museum at Bayeux in Normandy. Mediaeval church murals are another example and some of the best in Britain are to be found in South Lincolnshire, at Pickworth and Corby Glen. Saturday 18th March 2000
There have been many imitations of these continuous illustrations in recent years as a means of perpetuating history by similar artistic means with contributions from schools, groups and organisations throughout the country using their own communities as the subject. The latest has appeared at the village of Morton, near Bourne, and although this example may be a modest one, the new painting measuring 16 feet by 8 feet has been given pride of place on the wall of the village hall where it serves a similar purpose of telling a story in pictures, in this case by depicting the locality of past and present times.
The painting was commissioned to celebrate the millennium and is the work of local artist Terry Barnatt who spent four months on its creation, using acrylic paints and emulsions. It is based on a map of the parish and includes landmark buildings such as churches and old houses, wildlife, farming scenes and village views.
Terry who is 57, lives at Hanthorpe, which is part of Morton parish, and he became a professional artist and glass engraver after twenty years as a company secretary for a local wool merchant. These subjects were his hobby but are now his full time occupation and his work is well known in the locality. He has a particular interest in wildlife and as a young man was influenced by artists such as Sir Peter Scott and Keith Shackleton which is much evident in the Morton Millennium Mural that includes flora and fauna that can be seen in the vicinity, particularly Bourne Woods, one of his favourite spots.
The mural was conceived by the village's 2000 committee who financed it by raising the money locally and with a grant from the Lincolnshire Community Arts Fund. It was officially unveiled at a millennium party in February by Mrs Libby Murdin, one of the village's respected senior citizens who has devoted much of her life to voluntary work in the community. She said that it was something of which the village should be proud. "We have celebrated the millennium", she said, "much more than other villages in the area. The committee has fostered and enriched community life in the village. We should be very proud to have an artist in the parish who has produced what you see. It will be a lasting memorial to the millennium, a thing of beauty, and I hope it will be a joy to everyone."
While out in the countryside photographing the lesser celandines that appeared in the Diary last week, I had a cautionary reminder that our wild flowers are not safe for all to enjoy, even though they can only sometimes be found in quiet and secluded places. I found masses of them in several places, including Kirkby Underwood and at Greatford, but those I chose were growing alongside a dyke on the roadside verges near Edenham village and I pulled in to take some photographs. It was hazardous underfoot because the ground was soft and muddy from recent rain and so I stepped gingerly along the banks of the waterway and was soon absorbed in taking my pictures. After a few minutes, I became aware that someone was watching and looked up to find a middle-aged man standing a few feet away and observing my every movement and I suddenly realised that he thought I was plundering the countryside by digging up the plants for my own garden, or worse still, for sale on the market, a practice that is quite prevalent in many areas at this time of the year.
I hailed him and we talked and he became quite apologetic but admitted that this was indeed his original impression but on seeing my camera, he realised that I was capturing these flowers on film rather than for the removal and replanting. It turned out that he was a nature lover who had seen primroses, bluebells, wood anemones and cowslips uprooted from the woods and grass verges in this part of South Lincolnshire and had made it his business to challenge anyone he thought was desecrating the landscape in this way. We chatted for some time and his main criticism was directed against the farmers who are doing damage in a different way by the use of agro-chemicals because it is these pernicious substances that have done more to rid our country lanes of wild flowers than any thieves. Wild flowers taken from their natural setting in this way are most likely to die before they take root in someone's garden and at least a photograph will survive as a memory of that captured beauty.
Crime is everywhere in some degree, even in our rural backwater, and although we do not have those levels of murder and mayhem, theft and vandalism of the urban conurbations, we are aware of those law breakers whose activities are likely to disrupt our peaceful way of life even if their infringements may be minor but on the whole we could call this part of Lincolnshire a relatively crime free area.
Since I started this web site two years ago I have always sought permission to take photographs when on private property and have never once been refused. With almost 400 pictures on the site, this speaks volumes for the patience, understanding and co-operation of people when approached in a civil and neighbourly manner.
But I must now record my first refusal although I have chosen not to name names. Suffice it to say that this is a stately home dating back to the 16th century with a titled owner and within the orbit of the Bourne web site and a property that I was anxious to show to the thousands of people who log on to us each year. But when I presented myself on his doorstep this week and asked to take a picture of the house from within the grounds, I was most courteously received and politely refused.
We talked at length but he was immovable and the reason he gave was the sad and sorry state that our society has reached, when buildings and estates which form part of this country's heritage are at risk from burglars and poachers because details of their layout and sometimes their contents are given prominence in the media and now on the Internet. I did not share his misgivings that my particular pictures would add to such a risk because this house is among the illustrations in several guide books of the county but the point is that he, and perhaps his insurance company, did and so we are denied a view of this grandiose mansion except from the far distance of public land.
Thieves will steal if there are valuables to be stolen and their felonies are sometimes planned, usually opportunistic. However, it is not always crime that inhibits the cautious but often the perception of crime and that can make us equally paranoid. A burglary in the past means the possibility of another in the future and so every safeguard is taken to protect one's property even if there is no specific likelihood of a theft. Insurance companies know this so they thrive on our anxieties and unease. I am reminded of the words of an American president, Franklin D Roosevelt in his 1933 inaugural address: "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and wonder how far down this road we have already travelled.
The sheer stupidity that often overtakes some of our local councillors is staggering and at these times it is difficult to understand how they came to be elected in the first place. South Kesteven District Council is responsible for collecting our rubbish and in the latest act of reckless disregard for the public, Labour members tried to push through a new regulation restricting each household to two plastic bags per week instead of the five which are currently permitted. Saturday 25th March 2000
It beggars belief how such a suggestion could even be contemplated in these days of disposable packaging when the smallest of families generates enough rubbish to exceed such limitations every week of the year, with much more on public holidays such as Christmas and New Year. Yet the amendment was seriously put to a meeting of the council although I am pleased to report that sanity won the day and it was rejected by 40 votes to 10.
Exactly what did these councillors expect to achieve? The meeting was told that their objective was to save money on the annual budget for expenditure elsewhere and to encourage more people to recycle their rubbish but all it has done is to demean the role of certain elected representatives and to demonstrate how out of touch they are with those who put them in office.
If rubbish is not collected from the doorstep, a service for which we pay heavily through our annual council tax, then there are sufficient anti-social people around who would be quite prepared to dispose of it somewhere else, particularly in the countryside, along the roadside dykes and verges, many of which have already been polluted with discarded household waste, usually dumped by car at night. Experience has proved that homeowners are not willing to tolerate rubbish on their own premises and had this ridiculous amendment been passed by the council, the rural landscape in this locality could have been turned into a wasteland overnight. Such a restriction on collections would also cause acrimony between householders and refuse collectors and would inevitably lead to bags of uncollected rubbish littering our streets if this quota were to be enforced.
It is a commendable idea to encourage the recycling of more household waste but there is little incentive for home owners in carting boxes of bottles, tin cans and newspapers down to the recycling centres only to find them full to overflowing because the contractors have repeatedly failed in their responsibilities in emptying the various containers under their control and so everything is either taken home again or added to the mounting piles around them that create eyesores and attract vermin. If the councillors intent on restricting our rubbish collections are so concerned with the environment, then they should bring official pressure to bear on those responsible for the administration of these recycling centres to ensure that they are emptied more frequently and are always available for further deposits.
It would appear that this absurd move to curb the collection of household rubbish has been prompted by party politics because the amendment was put by Labour members as a last minute ruse to disrupt the council budget for the coming financial year but was thrown out by the ruling Conservative group. We therefore have vital public amenities being used as a weapon for political infighting, a most reprehensible state of affairs when there are so many areas of council spending in which real savings could be made if anyone took the trouble to find out instead of playing these silly games.
Street lighting for instance is also the responsibility of South Kesteven District Council and it is the duty of all councillors to ensure that it works correctly. One street light in Bourne has been burning erratically during the day for the past ten years and its amber glow can be seen in winter and summer whatever the weather and however small the sum involved, this is an unacceptable waste of public money that should have been stemmed long ago yet the light continues to shine at odd hours, at 11 a m, at mid-day and well into the afternoon, year in and year out, wasting electricity at the expense of those who pay the iniquitous and ever increasing council tax.
During my time as a councillor many years ago, not in this locality I might add, one of the tasks given to individual members was to walk allotted streets of our community at least once a week to ensure that our street lighting was properly programmed and working well, that the lamps switched on and off at the times that had been set, that there was continuous light during the night and that money was not being wasted by unnecessary illumination during the day, but perhaps our local councillors are disdainful of such duties and prefer instead to enjoy the comfort of the council chamber rather than carry out such mundane tasks out there among the people they represent.
It is a matter of good housekeeping that all lights and appliances are switched off when not in use and any home owner will anticipate with dismay the alarming rise in their electricity bill if they had inadvertently left the light on in the garage for even a month. Instead of squandering their time debating foolish and unacceptable changes to the way in which we dispose of our rubbish in the hope of scoring petty political points, our councillors would be far better employed in identifying real areas of wastage in public spending such as this.
The Victoria Cross awarded to Charles Sharpe of Bourne during the First World War is to go on display at the Royal Lincolnshire Regiment's museum. The medal is an important part of the regiment's 300 year history and now that their galleries in Lincoln have been refurbished, this is an opportune time for this conspicuous award for gallantry to go home, if only for a short time. Sharpe, a farm worker from Pickworth, near Bourne, who ran away from home to join the army in 1905 when he was only sixteen, earned his decoration on 9th May 1915 during the Battle of Aubers Ridge. The medal was sold at auction in 1989 and bought for £17,000 by South Kesteven District Council who have offered it to the museum on loan in time for the opening of the new galleries next month by the Duke of York. The medal, with Sharpe's other decorations and awards, will remain on display for the summer and will then be returned to the council offices but they will all be replaced by replicas.
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