Bourne Diary - August 2001

Saturday 4^th August 2001

Most of these magnificent temples were built during the Middle Ages but the sites had often been held sacred long before Christianity took root and when you open the gate of a churchyard today you could be entering some Celtic field of the dead or a wooded spot where nature herself was worshipped. Christianity came later but the dedication to this faith was so strong that permanent monuments were erected to its glory and so these familiar architectural pleasures stand with their feet in the primal faith or in the beliefs it superseded. Today, we can take our pick because we in England do not have an oppressive regime that tells us what we must and must not believe although that creeping malaise known as political correctness does demand that we subscribe to a religion that defies common sense.

But our churches remain beautiful, mysterious and soaked in history, and whether local people utilise them for a sacred function or not, their very presence in the landscape alters us because they remind us that people were living their lives here for many centuries past and these are monuments to their endeavours. They are the oldest of our buildings in Britain and yet we treat them the worst. Anyone who visits them regularly will know that some are fast falling into disrepair while even the best cared for would benefit by even more attention, despite strenuous efforts by the parson and his congregation.

The answer to this problem is a simple one but it is doubtful if it will be addressed. The Church of England has failed abysmally in its duty to keep these historic buildings in good order and all need large amounts of money to safeguard their future while the graveyards that surround them are often an unkempt and overgrown mass of grass and weeds. The National Lottery could be their salvation. A large slice of the profits from this weekly venture are designated to good causes and what better good cause could there be than our churches. Grants of £50,000 to each parish church would provide an immediate relief by funding maintenance for the fabric and bringing order to the churchyard. This is an obvious solution to a problem that worsens with the passing years. Most of these buildings have stood for almost 1,000 years but unless action is taken soon, their future cannot be assured.

Pocket money was always short when I was a boy and I was constantly on the lookout for the odd job that would earn me a penny or two. Pea and potato picking at harvest time during the wartime years of the early 1940s were the most popular tasks and as each farmer prepared to gather in his various crops, the word soon went round the neighbourhood that work was available and we would cycle out into the country, often ten and twenty miles, and queue at the farm gate hoping to be taken on for the day. Both activities were backbreaking work but pea picking was particularly arduous because the pods had to be pulled off the vines and collected in linen bags and after an hour or so, our knees turned black with crawling along in the fen soil and our hands were stained bright green by the chlorophyll from the peas. Payment was on a piecework basis with a fixed rate for each half hundredweight bag or sack picked but the money was only paid out after they had been checked on the scales by the farmer to ensure that you were not giving short weight and although some lads tried to cheat by putting in heavy stones, they were soon found out and sacked on the spot. Some days, we went home with sixpence or a shilling but others, when it rained, we did not earn a penny and were not even paid for those half bags that we had picked.

These memories came back to me when we sampled some peas straight from the field, part of a commercial crop being grown locally for the food processing industry. The bagful I was given contained sufficient for three meals and after shelling them, we discovered that they were so succulent and tasty that they needed little preparation for the table and we enjoyed them lightly boiled with mint and served with a knob of butter. They are certainly the best peas I have tasted since my boyhood days of pea picking and this experience set me on the trail of this popular vegetable and last week I went out to see them being harvested. William Ash, who farms at Dyke, near Bourne, invited me to watch one of his crops being cut in Meadow Drove and to follow the peas through from field to factory.

But the pea pickers are no more. Fifty years ago, this field would have thronged with people, mostly women and children, bent low over their work, pulling the peas off the vines and collecting them in bags or sacks. Some would work in teams, families and friends, while others preferred to toil alone, and only the fittest survived until evening. Today, two machines completed the task on a 27-acre field in eight hours where once gangs of workers would have spent as many days.

From the field I went to the factory, the Christian Salvesen food processing plant on the Cherryholt Road industrial estate in Bourne where the peas were delivered after harvesting. There are many commercial and industrial activities quietly going on in our town about which we know very little and the operations at this plant were a revelation because I discovered that the humble pea has now become the centre of a massive growing and marketing operation to ensure that the housewife gets the very best product and, through modern processing techniques, at the peak of perfection. Such is progress. My item on the pea harvest is added today to Bourne Focus.

Increasing traffic flows in and around Bourne are now causing serious inconvenience for those who use the roads during the morning and evening peak periods and the long delays that are being experienced highlight the problems that will be created as a result of further house building in the locality. The various road junctions that feed into the main A15 have become particular black spots and there are now long delays in waiting to join the flow at such places as Mill Drove and Stanley Street. I am told that drivers face an even longer wait in the villages to the south of the town with Langtoft the worst affected because of the new residential development to the south of the village and delays of 15 minutes and even more before being able to get on to the main road are not unknown.

Another black spot in the making is the Elsea Park development south of Bourne where the additional traffic from the new homes will make this road a nightmare for anyone who has to travel this way to and from their work. It is pertinent to ask whether the county highways department has checked the vehicle flows on the road at this point in recent years for if they had, the results would surely indicate that it cannot possibly take any more cars and vans at peak periods without exacerbating the congestion that is already causing serious inconvenience and indeed, a major traffic hazard. The impatience generated by such delays when someone is trying to get to work is a form of road rage that clouds judgment and often leads to accidents.

Work is starting on the realignment of the A15 trunk road at this point which will include a new roundabout and notices warn that we are in for 26 weeks of delay until the project is completed. It must take some genius to arrange this work at the height of the holiday season but this is the way our bureaucracy works. This project interests me because there is an old milestone on the grass verge that could be at risk from the development taking place here. It is an ancient road marker with a cast iron plate fixed to the front of the stone and probably erected in the 18th century although it might easily be missed because it is small and partly obscured by grass and weeds but its directions are still clear: London 96 miles and Deeping 6 miles. Conservationists are already seeking assurances that this milestone will be preserved and if need be, moved to a similar and secure location in the immediate vicinity to protect it for the future. To put the importance of this historic item of wayside furniture into perspective, I have written a short history of Britain's milestones that has been added today to Bourne Focus and it also includes a picture of this particular example.

Bourne has a new community web site that has been launched by John and Julie Gardner who live in Beech Avenue and who run a successful software-testing consultancy. They are offering free space to all non-profit making local organisations, clubs, charities, societies, schools and churches, and there will also be information about civic facilities, local politics, business and commerce, while a host of other features are planned for the future. John tells me that he wants to provide essential information about everything that is going on in Bourne and the surrounding areas for local residents, people who have just moved in or are thinking of making their home here.

The web site will provide a portal to what is going on in the town, rather like Yahoo U K that gives a similar service for Britain. Indeed, the new site is already so informative that it is a natural complement to the Bourne web site that deals mainly with the history and heritage and so we have added a link to it on our front page as a service to our visitors and we look forward to a long and happy co-operation. "We live here and our two children attend local schools", said John. "Producing this web site is our way of contributing to and raising the profile of this town that we have chosen to call home." It will answer most current questions about Bourne and eventually it hopes to address them all and in the meantime, you can log on to it from our front page.

There have been many requests in recent months for us to provide space on the Notice Board that can be used by visitors for personal messages and announcements and I have finally been spurred into action by Beryl White who lives at Clunes in Victoria, Australia, an expatriate who left England in 1987 and is coming home this month to attend the Burghley Horse Trials at Stamford and to meet old friends in Bourne. Beryl (née Sturgeon) worked as a stud groom for 15 years at the stables based in the Austerby and when she found a photograph of the old manor house on the web site, she shed a small tear and was moved to write to me about her visit. Beryl, who lived at No 70 Kingsway from 1970-87, will be flying home on August 18th and if anyone wants to get in touch to arrange a meeting, you will find details in the entry she has left on the new Personal section of the Notice Board. If anyone else has a similar announcement to make, just email me and it will be posted.

Thought for the Week: A local sixth-form group, when asked why none of them would consider a career in teaching, replied: "We wouldn't want to spend our lives being treated the way we have treated our teachers." - letter from R M of Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire, in the Write On feature on ITV Teletext, 28th July 2001.

Saturday 11^th August 2001

We therefore think that these precautions are mere window dressing, the application of the feel good factor, until something drastic happens, such as shop windows being smashed in North Street, an arson attack at the football club on the Abbey Lawn or vandalism of the seats in the Burghley Centre that has resulted in their withdrawal, causing great inconvenience to the old people who shop there, including myself. We realise then that CCTV electronic surveillance is either inadequate, because it does not cover those places that it should, or inefficient where it does, and therefore there is a sense of despair in the realisation that no matter what new technology is introduced to deter anti-social behaviour, the yobs will win in the end.

Bourne is not alone here but when compared with the rest of the world, we may be lucky. Last week, I sent a photograph of some local public houses to a correspondent in Texas, U S A, who had been in England with the armed forces during the Second World War and remembered his stay with some affection. He had asked me if these pubs were still the same welcoming places that he had known in the 1940s and I had to reply that although we do still have some excellent hostelries, many were not so good because they had been painted and tarted up outside with noisy music, the smell of fast food inside and often exorbitant prices for their drinks. But his reply made me realise that we still have a long way to go before we reach the extremes of life in modern day America because he wrote:

It is a shame to see the old pubs trashed and giving way to a generation of misfits. Our drinking bars are filled with nude dancers, drag queens and loud country music along with illegal drug infestations. I have not been in one for the past 35 years or so. There are too many killings and fights. Not a day goes by in Fort Worth or Dallas but what I hear on the news of at least two or three killings and random drive-by shootings from people in cars. Yet our authorities keeping telling us how much crime has decreased. We probably have the distinction of having the bloodiest country in the free world.

These thoughts have a familiar ring. Violence in this country has not yet reached such endemic proportions but one thing we must not do is to sweep crime under the carpet and act as though it has not occurred. A more robust approach is needed, even a policy of zero tolerance, because unless those who defy our conventions are discouraged to curb their conduct, then we are on the slippery slope to a society dominated by wrongdoing. Messages such as this are a clarion call to all who treasure a safe and secure way of life and we ignore them at our peril.

Frank Wyer and his wife Shirley are among the unsung heroes of our village churches because without dedicated workers like them, these buildings would not survive. The 13th century church of St Mary and All Saints stands on the very edge of Kirkby Underwood, five miles north of Bourne, but it is one of the best kept in the area and much of this is due to Frank, now 71, but still active enough to keep the grass and the perimeter hedge in trim and to ensure that the building inside is always in a presentable state for visitors. He is not only churchwarden but also the only bellringer, a job pioneered by his grandfather Thomas Wyer who started ringing in 1875, and which he began as a lad of 16 in 1946 and continues to this day, ably handling a peal of three bells, soon to become four once the new millennium bell is hung. In case anyone doubted his skills at campanology, Frank decided to ring out for charity last Sunday and he happily pealed away for 1 hour 35 minutes, raising £1,000 from sponsors in the process that will go towards the £6,000 needed for the installation of that fourth bell. We must not forget either his wife Shirley who is quietly busy with her own skills at the church organ which she has been playing at services since 1947. In fact, Frank once told me that when they were married in 1959, the local newspaper headlined the event Warden weds organist, a togetherness that is reflected with a wry touch of humour at home because they have called their bungalow in the village Erzenmyne, a name that has amused generations of postmen.

There seem to be more expatriates around the world with an affection for Kirkby Underwood than any other village in the Bourne area and so I have extended these pages and the revised version is added to the web site today. I know that there are people in Australia and the United States who remember their years here with great affection and I have in fact helped research some of the tombstones in the churchyard and passed this information on. Invariably, the Wyer family have featured somewhere in these investigations and Frank may be pleased to know that many people on the other side of the Atlantic claim him as a distant relative and that Kirkby Underwood was celebrated on Thanksgiving Day last year by a large family gathering at Devine in Texas as the place where their ancestor, Edward Marshall, was born and christened in the very church that Frank now cares for.

Famous personalities from the past usually appear to be remote figures with whom we have nothing in common, even if they come from our own town, because we never met them and all that we know of their lives is what we read in books. The link that makes them come alive as real people is the memories of those who did meet them and so it is with Charles Worth. He was the son of a Bourne solicitor who left home to seek his fortune when still a boy in the early 19th century and rose to eminence as the founder of haute couture, patronised by rich and royal clients, while the fashion salon he founded in Paris survived as a successful business until 1956.

But Charles never forgot his roots and after he had achieved fame, he often returned to his home town before he died in 1895, sometimes staying with Mr Stephen Andrews, a solicitor who subsequently bought his father's business at Wake House in North Street. The Worth creations became internationally known because he dressed the world's ladies of fashion but he was always on the lookout for new ideas and a tale of this constant observance was remembered by one of the town's family doctors, John Galletly (1899-1993), who had been told it by one of his patients earlier in the century.

One day, a lady who prided herself on dressing fashionably, was waiting for a train on the platform of Bourne railway station when she became agitated by the conduct of a man who appeared to be keeping her under close scrutiny. Unable to bear such unwanted attention any longer, she sought out the stationmaster and complained that the stranger was rudely walking round her and staring intently at her dress. The stationmaster smiled and replied: "Madam, you should feel honoured because that man is the great Worth himself."

Ghost stories do not crop up so often in everyday conversation as they did in my youth. We have been spoiled by television where they are commonplace and so we laugh at them as though they do not exist. When I was a boy, we would revel in all of the macabre details of such tales and shudder with the thought of coming face to face with an apparition, hurrying home on dark nights along streets with inadequate lighting or even none at all and dashing past those dark and forbidding houses that were reputed to be haunted. Our caution was compounded by the old black and white films that we watched from the stalls of the flea pit cinemas of the day with a mixture of excitement and fascination and although we laughed about them with our pals afterwards, there was always a feeling that perhaps there might be something in it after all.

The headless horseman, the cavalier with his head tucked underneath his arm and, from a more recent age, the ghost train, all have their origins in literature but once these stories are recounted second hand they take root and become part of our folklore. I lived for a spell at the Bell Inn, an ancient posting hostelry on the Great North Road in what was then Huntingdonshire, where legend had it that the notorious 18th century highwayman Dick Turpin had once stayed and still haunted the upper rooms after being hanged for his crimes. After several alleged encounters by guests, a learned society from Cambridge who were engaged in a study of the paranormal sought permission from the landlord to carry out a ghost hunt and one of their members spent the night there with hidden cameras, tape recorders and other devices in an attempt to identify any unusual occurrences but to no avail although his investigations were widely publicised and this did increase trade for the next few months.

I have already recounted the legend of the unfortunate Nanny Rut of Elsea Wood near Bourne and the tale of the white lady that is reputed to haunt the countryside around Eady's Barn near Deeping St James (See Diary 14th August 1999) and was therefore intrigued to find ghosts visiting the Bourne Forum this week after one contributor told us of a house in Dyke village that is reputed to be haunted. Relatives who stayed there several times claimed that strange lights moved up the stairs, along landings and through doors into bedrooms where blankets were pulled from the bed. This account was immediately followed by other tales of the unexplained and unexpected including a spectre at Kate's Bridge, wraithlike monks at St Peter's Pool and near Coggles Causeway, a grey lady in the graveyard at the Abbey Church and another at Cavalry House in South Road, a legion of phantom Roman soldiers stepping out along Mill Drove and an illusory man and his dog on the main road at Toft.

If all these manifestations are to be believed, then Bourne must be the most haunted place in Britain and so I would also like to add to the list from my recent researches with two more ghosts in our locality that have been hitherto unknown to me. The first is the black dog of Stowe, the hamlet just off King Street south of Bourne on the way to Greatford village. The animal is supposed to have been seen by travellers passing this way and many have claimed that a huge black dog has suddenly appeared beside them and then the next minute it was gone.

The ghost at Rippingale is a little more colourful because it is another white lady, one of the more popular spectres from the English countryside and this one is known as the white lady of Ringstone. This is the name of the vanished village, mentioned in the Domesday Book and once the site of a grand country mansion that was home to many important families down the centuries but the house fell into decay and nothing now remains except for a few stones although clear markings can be seen in the grass where its gardens, tennis courts and cellars once stood. The ghost here was perhaps thwarted in love because she is reputed to appear on moonlit nights riding in a carriage drawn by four horses.

Such stories are not uncommon although there is no concrete evidence that ghosts exist apart from occasional personal testimonies and I have been wondering how many people out there place any credence on them or have even experienced similar phenomena themselves. I have therefore made this the subject of this week's poll with the question: Do you believe in ghosts? This is a subject that will appeal to all of our visitors around the world and the result should be an indication of the credulity of man.

Thought for the Week: "We will take everything with us, floodlights, railings, anything moveable. The clubhouse would be flattened and Bourne United Charities [the owners] would be left with just a patch of grass." - Chairman Don Mitchell suggesting the removal of Bourne Town Football Club to an out of town location because of continued vandalism, including arson, at their premises on the Abbey Lawn where they have been playing for more than a century.

Saturday 18^th August 2001

These flowers are being grown as bird seed and one of the reasons is that Nicholas Watts is a devoted conservationist. His great-grandfather moved to South Lincolnshire in 1883 and his family based at Vine House Farm, Deeping St Nicholas, is the oldest farming family in the neighbourhood. Nicholas took over in 1966 when his father handed him 400 acres and told him: "You had better get on with it" and this he has done, now controlling 1,800 acres including the large tracts at Baston Fen, three miles south of Bourne, that are providing such a colourful sight to delight passers-by at this time of the year.

Nicholas has been interested in birds all his life and he started feeding them in his garden in the early 1980s. "In those days", he recalls, "anything I put out was immediately devoured by house sparrows and starlings. The only thing they would not eat was oil seed rape so that is all I fed for several years and greenfinches, goldfinches and chaffinches were my main visitors with several linnets in the spring. I actually started growing sunflowers in my paddock by mistake but it was this mistake that made me realise that I could grow all of the bird seed I wanted and since then, things have just got bigger and bigger."

Most of the sunflower seed sold in Britain is imported from France, Spain or Hungary but this year's crop of sunflowers near Bourne will be the largest he has ever harvested, likely to produce between 600 and 700 kilos of seed per acre. All will be sold as bird seed from his own farm and it is the finches that will benefit because it is this species that are particularly attracted to black sunflower seeds which have more fat in them and are therefore more nutritious than the striped variety. Nicholas said that his interest in conservation and wild birds in particular had lead him to farm in a more environmentally friendly way. He added: "The government has also told farmers to diversify to avoid economic hardship and so this is what we have done."

My wife has finally decided that I have flipped my lid. This diagnosis has been determined because of my latest practice of putting a ladder in the car whenever I go out to take photographs for the web site. It is not one of those long ladders used by roofers and window cleaners but a modest folding step ladder, the sort that you might keep under the stairs in case you need to paint the ceiling or dust the pelmets but it is, nevertheless, quite long and because it does not fit into the boot, I need to fiddle about with the seats in my modest saloon car to find it a place. If my wife comes too, her passenger seat must be adjusted forward, resulting in less leg space, and it was at this point when we left home for an outing last week that she arrived at her conclusion as to my current state of mental health.

This latest addition to my photographic equipment that already includes three cameras, a large bag, assorted devices to cope with weather conditions, spare films, a tripod, a notebook and an assortment of pens, is fast becoming an essential accoutrement to my sorties in search of new material because it enables me to see over high walls and hedges and to shoot panoramic views from three and four feet up whereas in the past, most of my pictures have been taken from ground level. There is one drawback: being an old codger who has passed his three score years and ten, heights are no longer easily negotiated and balancing on the top rung of the ladder is a formidable task and only achieved after ignoring my wife's advice to be careful because a fall at my age would mean a broken hip, leg or even worse.

But, like Mount Everest, the ladder is there to be scaled when a good view presents itself and so it was last week when I went out to photograph the sunflowers in Baston Fen. The land at the field's edge was thick with weeds and the surface uneven but I managed to place my ladder a reasonably secure spot and then climbed to the top step and waited for ten or more minutes in this precarious position for the right moment while the sun played hide and seek with the clouds. The result can be seen in Picture of the Week and I think that my dare devilry was worth the risk involved.

It was inevitable that our poll on the existence of ghosts would produce some unexpected replies and so it has proved. The sceptics will always find a reason for an unexplained occurrence, a trick of the light for instance, that would make a shadow look like a phantom dog or a white lady in a strange and mysterious place while floorboards creaking with changing temperatures give rise to stories of haunted houses. All of these tales are the stuff of fiction but how we can account for those everyday occurrences that defy an explanation, unless we are either the victims of a practical joke or are being told a good tale that is merely the work of a virile imagination.

Which category, I wonder, does this story fall into? It was contributed by one of our voters and it is too good not to share with you, even though the author did not leave his name. If these events happened as he described them, then we may have cause to think again on this subject. But then again, he could have been the victim of a practical joke or he might have made the whole thing up. Either way, it is a very good tale and you must make your mind up for yourself. He wrote:

For want of a better descriptive word, I will go along with the definition of ghost but I prefer to classify it as an illogical happening for which I have no explanation. In 1952, while serving my National Service with the Royal Air Force at an aerodrome in Norfolk, I returned to the barracks after a Saturday night dance at two o'clock in the morning and went into the bathroom. An individual was doing some washing over at the "dobie" sinks, I said "Hello" and commented that it was a strange time of night to be doing his laundry. He turned and glared at me with a piercing look through his horn-rimmed glasses. He never uttered a word but continued to stare me out.

Since I had never seen him before, though I had been in that barracks for over three months, I assumed that we must have had a "weirdo" posted in. Whilst I completed my ablutions, he picked up his laundry and walked into a small room known as the "Dry", closing the door behind him. I picked up my toothbrush and soap and carried my wet towel and face cloth to hang in the "Dry". I opened the door and was astounded to find that the "weirdo" was not there. There were no wet items hanging on the rails nor were any which would have still been dripping, considering that it was less than a minute before I had followed him in. The next morning in the mess, I related the incident to my friends, one of them a military policeman who insisted that I report it to the Guard House. Reluctantly I did so, feeling very sheepish, but when the sergeant phoned the warrant officer, I immediately knew that something serious was being made of it.

The W O took me into his office, closed the door and asked me for all the details. When I was finished, he went over to a filing cabinet and took out a file and placed it in front of me. He then opened it and asked: "Was this the man?" A large 8 x 10 photo of the individual that I had encountered, complete with glasses, lay before me. When I nodded, he told me not to get scared because the individual, known as "Professor" Hughes (whose photo it was), had hanged himself in the "Dry" in 1944 during the Second World War. The two inch thick file contained previous reports of similar encounters by people who, like myself, came forward but he added that many others were just too scared to report it. Since this was an official government file relating to the security of the experimental station, it must still be sitting somewhere in the archives of R A F West Raynham which I understand has been long closed.

I was struck by the low turnout for this poll and for that last week on the existence of God, both of which attracted less than 100 votes. The reason was most probably that the summer holidays are now upon us and people prefer to be out and about rather than spending time in front of their computer screens. But I cannot help wondering whether both questions, on the existence of God and of ghosts, created a dilemma for many, not wanting to accept or deny the existence of the supernatural, hedging their bets just in case they were wrong, and so instead of committing themselves one way or the other, they chose to sit on the fence and refrained from voting. Yet the answer to both questions is quite simple and needs only a little common sense to arrive at a conclusion.

Banks throw money at their customers these days. Loans of several thousands at a time can be arranged in a brief telephone call and overdrafts of staggering proportions appear to be commonplace. It was not always so. There was a time when it was considered a privilege to have a bank account at all and this status was only achieved after a prolonged system of vetting, culminating with a terrifying interview with the bank manager who had the power to refuse you as though your were being blackballed from an exclusive London club. The bank manager epitomised by Mr Mainwaring in the B B C Television comedy series Dad's Army may be an anachronism today but such characters were alive and thriving in my youth and an encounter with one of them over his desk in the privacy of his office was inevitable if you wanted to overdraw by a few pounds and unless your finances were in a very sound state indeed, the answer was invariably no.

Bank managers therefore acquired a reputation as cold fishes with none of the finer feelings of those of us who were out there spending money and enjoying life. They were the essence of prudent living and never failed to preach this creed whenever a customer appeared to be straying from the path of financial probity. We therefore assumed that they lived cloistered lives, a nine to five existence governed entirely by the ebb and flow of the cash in their care, but always on hand to advise local organisations such as the parochial church council and the Rotary Club about their accounts. In short, they were the pillars of society, as solid as, we used to say, the Rock of Gibraltar. They could therefore have no time for leisure pursuits because money was their entire world.

Imagine then one such bank manager disappearing home at night and adopting an entirely alien persona, that of the artist who dabbled in oils. Such a man was Robert Arthur Gardner, a manager of what is now Barclays Bank in North Street, Bourne, at the turn of the century. He started as an amateur painter but became so proficient that his canvasses were eventually hung in the Royal Academy in London. Many examples of his work still exist in Bourne because he was a generous man who frequently donated them as prizes to various charities and some can be seen on display at the Red Hall. The life of R A Gardner ARA (1850-1926) is added today to Bourne Focus.

Thought for the Week: "To enjoy retirement with the never-failing resources of a well-stored mind is the sweetest pleasure of a full-aged man." - William Smith (1769-1839), civil engineer and the father of English geology, who withdrew happily to Scarborough in Yorkshire for his final years after a lifetime's activity mapping the rock formations of Britain.

Saturday 25^th August 2001

Deceit, perfidy, treachery and worse have been the mark of many politicians through the ages and there can be no one who assumes power that does not envy the unswerving and devoted allegiance that was paid to Queen Elizabeth I by her right hand man, our own William Cecil, born here in Bourne in 1520 and who rose to achieve eminence as her First Minister. He was the first to kneel in homage when Elizabeth became Queen in November 1558 and his reward was to become Secretary of State. "This judgment I have of you", she said, "that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the state; and that without respect to my private will, you will give me that counsel which you think best."

Her word became a bond between them that was never broken during 40 years of loyal service to her cause. In 1572, he became Lord Treasurer and was raised to the peerage as the first Lord Burghley but to Elizabeth he was always Sir Spirit, an incongruous and playful nickname for "the gravest and wisest counsellor in all of Christendom". The Queen was devoted to him, visiting him often at his home, and Cecil guided her through every crisis of her reign. When he talked of retirement, she refused to listen. "I need you old man", was her stock answer and so he continued to serve.

He became ill in the summer of 1598 and the Queen sent cordials every day and visited him as often as she could. Servants bringing him food were sent away and she would feed him herself. Cecil wrote to his son Robert: "Her Majesty, though she will not be a mother, yet showeth herself to be a careful nurse, by feeding me with her own princely hand." He died on August 5th at the age of 77 and for months afterwards, whenever his name was mentioned at meetings of the council, Elizabeth wept openly. It was a personal tribute to a Lincolnshire man with a political genius and someone who had showed a loyalty that has been unmatched in government since. See also Bourne Focus.

To understand what a town looked like in past times you only need to walk the main streets looking upwards, a somewhat hazardous pursuit in view of the hurrying crowds and passing traffic and so you must stop to investigate every few yards. What you will see above the shop fronts are the facades as they were before commerce invaded our town centres and turned once historic buildings into everlasting eyesores.

If you wanted a view of North Street in Bourne, for instance, as it was in the early part of the last century, then imagine a panoramic photograph showing only the upper parts of each building and excluding the ground floors and it would appear as though time had stood still. There are cables strewn across many frontages, and West Street has several such unsightly examples, but by and large, the top storeys have been untouched and still evoke the architecture of past times. Compare these with old photographs of the town and you will have a taste of what Bourne once looked like.

The invasion of the shop front into former residential areas is particularly evident in the big cities and there are many places in London, for instance, where whole rows of houses have been ripped apart in the pursuit of profit. Streets of once attractive Georgian and Victorian residences have been commercially vandalised with the addition of garish frontages that become even more unsightly each time they change hands with the addition of plastic shop titles and illuminated advertising signs.

Stringent town planning laws did not become effective in Britain until after the Second World War but by then it was too late to stop this insidious blight of so many areas of the inner cities that were once delightful places to live in and it is only in recent years that we have started to reverse the trend by building retail centres and supermarkets on their own sites and away from those areas where we live. One stop shopping is both convenient and essential but this should not mean an end to our town centres that can supplement this mass retail activity with the sale of specialist goods and services. The buildings from which they operate however must be attractively maintained and complacency will lead to neglect that will merely exacerbate the problems that we have experienced here in Bourne in recent years.

Diversity of opinion is part of life's rich tapestry. Without it, we would all agree on the same things and although this would certainly relieve some of the tensions in the world today, our existence would be dull indeed. The Greek dramatist Sophocles (495-406 B C) insisted that the truth is always the strongest argument but philosophers since his day have questioned the definition of truth and now 2,000 years later, we equate truth with known facts, or our perception of those facts, and that is a very different matter. One thing I remember from my time as a court reporter fifty years ago is that eye witnesses are totally unreliable. Ten people who saw a road accident will all give differing accounts and yet their evidence determines the outcome of important cases in which a man may lose his freedom, or indeed his life in some countries, on the sworn statements of those who sincerely believe they are telling the truth.

If they are not, and are making statements for other reasons, then in the absence of a proven denial, this is still accepted as evidence. The number of cases that have been subsequently adjudged as "unsafe" in recent years are an indictment of this system that is based not on truth but on opinion and is often motivated by malice, prejudice, hatred or by some unknown quantity, and at worst, it may even be totally untrue for reasons that will never be revealed.

I have been pondering on the validity of personal opinion as a result of two widely differing views of Bourne that I have been given in recent weeks by visitors from Australia.

Paul Hinson is the great-grandson of Thomas Hinson (1816-1902), a monumental mason who worked in Bourne during the 19th century and who carved many of the headstones in the town cemetery. He was born in this country but became discouraged and left to seek a better life elsewhere and now lives at Manly in New South Wales where he has made good. He and his wife Evelyn called in while on a caravan tour of Britain and over lunch, I asked him what he thought of Bourne. "We are two months into a six-month tour of the country", he said, "and Bourne is the seediest place we have been to so far. The most attractive place we have found in the town is the cemetery."

Then last week, Anthony Crampton from Sydney, not far from where Paul lives, a descendant of William Crampton of Bourne who sailed for Australia with his wife and three children in 1857, left the following message in the web site guest book saying: "My ancestors made the long journey from Bourne to New South Wales in the mid-1800s. After 150 years of highs and lows, I am proud to call myself Australian and equally proud of my family's heritage. My family and I have returned to Bourne and are puzzled as to why we left. The area is beautiful and creates an air of nostalgia and history. Thank you."

Those holding similar strong views about this town will have to make up their minds who they agree with because both of these people are equally steadfast in their opinions. But then perhaps both are right because in the final analysis, we see only that which we wish to see.

Tongue End must be one of the loneliest places in Lincolnshire and yet many people are still happy to call it home. This is a windswept hamlet in the heart of the fens, three miles south of Bourne, with no shops, services or community facilities and yet new residential development is very much in evidence as proof that there are still many people who prefer the quiet life. It was here in 1931 that Vera Fawcett, then aged 20, came to live as a young bride and it is here that she remains, now aged 88 and living in contented retirement with vivid memories of a happy life, despite the drawbacks of such an isolated community.

She had a strict church upbringing during her childhood in Spalding and after marrying George Fawcett, a blacksmith and farm worker, they set up home in a cottage overlooking the Counter Drain, one of the great dykes built during the early 19th century to prevent the agricultural land in this part of the fens from becoming flooded or waterlogged. Money was short and she kept house and brought up two children on 25s. a week and so there was nothing left for the small luxuries of life. Nevertheless, she still remembers those times as the good old days, but only morally and spiritually, for despite the consumer society that we enjoy today, she believes that our personal standards have slipped and that we are now only a short step away from Armageddon. Vera, a widow for 22 years, looks back at the slow decline of Tongue End during the past half century with great regret, the closure of the church and chapel, the public houses, the post office, the village hall and, most importantly, the school. "When that shut", said Vera, "the heart went out of the village and it has never recovered."

New houses are however springing up. I have spent some time at Tongue End during the past few days and although my original opinion was one of a hamlet set in harsh and unforgiving surroundings, the embers of a warm heart can still be found and perhaps the newcomers moving in will use them to fire a new community spirit for the future. My essay on this unusual place and an explanation about its very odd name has been added today to Around Bourne.

Thought for the Week: Lincolnshire County Council has announced that work is due to start on the Bourne by-pass in April 1994 with a completion date of October 1995. - from the August 1991 archives of the Stamford Mercury and published in their Past Events feature on 17th August 2001.

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