Bourne Diary - August 2002

Saturday 3^rd August 2002

The water level at St Peter’s Pool has dropped to between two and three feet below normal despite this week’s heavy rain, and our pair of black swans and their cygnets are having difficulty in remaining afloat because of the dense weed growth now covering the surface. The situation here is all the more disturbing when you consider that the pool is fed by seven underground springs that produce several million gallons of water a day which is the very reason why Bourne sprang up around it but water has become a valuable commodity and our supply is now piped to a very large catchment area with the result that this town takes second place to homes and businesses further afield.

The situation is not a new one and as with so many problems that bedevil this town, whether it be rubbish disposal, traffic flows or the need for a new bypass, it is something that has been known to councillors for decades and yet as they come and go, nothing has been done to remedy it.

The abundance of water from Bourne’s underground springs was such that by 1861 it was estimated that the Wellhead was supplying enough for seven towns the size of Bourne, allowing for 20 gallons per person per day. Such unlimited supplies inevitably attracted commercial attention and in 1857, the Bourne Waterworks Company was formed, although its early operations were only on a small scale. Nevertheless, the company did start to bring the benefits of a piped supply to people such as those living in the almshouses in South Road who until then had been collecting supplies with a bucket from the Bourne Eau although it was often contaminated by the refuse and other waste that had been thrown in. Projects such as this enabled the waterworks to expand and soon they were not only supplying the town but also Spalding 13 miles away with five million gallons a day from their main borehole in the Abbey road.

In 1927, the company was taken over by Bourne Urban District Council with the aid of a government loan of £4,500 that paid for the acquisition and the cost of renewing and extending existing mains. Dr John Gilpin, the Medical Officer of Health, warned at the time that although Bourne had an abundance of water, the increasing rate of extraction would need mechanical rather than natural pressure to bring it to the surface. This has since happened with more and more powerful pumps being brought into use to tap these underground supplies. Control of the water utility passed from the urban council to the South Lincolnshire Water Board in 1962 and in 1976, its responsibilities were handed over to the new Anglian Water Authority, now known simply as Anglian Water, the organisation to which you now pay your water rates.

Meanwhile, a new water pumping station was opened at Bourne in February 1974 during a modernisation scheme costing £350,000. It comprised six new electrical pumps, each capable of delivering 1.5 million gallons of water daily, a development designed to provide a water supply to one quarter of a million people in South Lincolnshire and Peterborough at the rate of six million gallons a day. This is where our water goes and this is the reason for the increasingly low water levels along the Bourne Eau and at St Peter’s Pool. The once abundant water supply that rose freely from underground springs around which this community sprang up is now a commercial proposition that pumps out every available gallon around the clock and the town that provides it is the worse off for it.

Preliminary work has begun on restoring two water wheels at Baldock’s Mill in Bourne, the early 19th century building that houses the town’s Heritage Centre. The project is costing £10,000 and is being funded mainly through grants with £3,500 already being handed over by Lincolnshire County Council. This has enabled the Civic Society who currently run the mill to start drawing up plans for the construction and installation of the wheels to bring the building back into its original state when it was used for milling corn.

Baldock’s Mill was built on the banks of the Bourne Eau in South Street in 1800 and is named after the last family who worked there as millers. It stopped grinding corn about 1924 when the main water wheel collapsed and was not repaired although the last miller, Jack Baldock, continued to operate a timber business from the building. The wheel and mill machinery were eventually removed but the mill race can still be seen within the building, now Grade II listed as being of architectural and historic interest. The restored property is owned by Bourne United Charities but for the past 20 years has been leased to the Civic Society who have preserved it for community use as the town’s Heritage Centre that was opened in 1999 and containing the Raymond Mays Memorial Room together with an expanding display of material reflecting the history of the town.

During its working life, the mill wheel was 15 feet in diameter by 3 feet wide and the smaller fly wheel measured 5 feet by 12 inches. It is these two wheels that are to be restored and much of the work will be done by Jim Jones, a member of the Civic Society and husband of the chairman Mrs Brenda Jones. Working diagrams that he has already completed, using his past experience as a draughtsman, show a large wheel made of wood, 10 feet in diameter by 35 inches in width, smaller than the original although this will be largely decorative, and a second wheel made of steel to the original size of 5 feet in diameter and 12 inches wide, and it is hoped that this will harness the water power in the mill race to generate electricity for heating and lighting the mill. There will be a viewing point from where visitors will be able to see both wheels in action once the project is complete.

The work is the latest stage in the restoration that began in 1983. “Not only will this project bring the mill to life again but it will also be an added tourist attraction”, said Jim.

Jim and Brenda Jones are two of the busiest members of the Civic Society and I have mentioned their stalwart work before. Without people such as this, newcomers to the town because they did not move to Bourne until 1976, voluntary projects like the Heritage Centre and several others, would founder. There is always work to be done at the mill and if you wish to take part, then I urge you to go along and join the Civic Society and you will be most welcome. There is an application form on the web site Notice Board.

A rare example of a weeping ash tree that has dominated the churchyard at Rippingale for more than a century has been cut down. Tree surgeons arrived last Saturday and within hours, this familiar landmark standing next to the war memorial had been reduced to a pile of logs.

The weeping ash (Fraxinus excelsior 'Pendula') is not a common sight in Britain but it can be found in some gardens, parks and churchyards and is identified by its long vigorous shoots that grow straight down to the ground from a head of twisting branches, once seen, never forgotten. This example, in the shadow of St Andrew’s Church, can be found in many a family album because it has been a favourite spot for newly weds to be photographed after tying the knot.

Fears for the future of the tree surfaced earlier this year when it failed to produce any leaves and as the weeks went by it became apparent that it was dying and an inspection showed that the trunk was partly hollow and might be toppled by strong winds and cause damage. When it was eventually cut down, a section of the trunk revealed that it had rotted inside, perhaps from a previous drought because the churchyard stands elevated from the main street and would become very dry in rainless periods. Nevertheless, the weeping ash has been a popular village feature that will be sadly missed although the parish council are hoping to replace it with a tree of the same species before the year is out.

One would imagine that the lamplighters of yesteryear are in the dim and distant past but I have discovered that they were still working at Dyke village in the early part of the 20th century. The street lamps in those days were fuelled by oil and needed to be lit at dusk and extinguished at dawn next day and this task was carried out by the village lamplighter. He lost his job however in 1934 when Bourne Urban District Council who ran the town’s gasworks finally laid a gas main to the village and made the oil lamps redundant.

The streets were finally lit with gas for the first time after the official switch on took place Saturday 1st September. Until then, twelve oil lamp standards had been used to light the streets but these appliances were replaced by gas burners and the number reduced to nine because their increased brilliance required fewer of them. The old system of lighting and extinguishing the lamps by hand was also abolished in favour of an automatic clock system that switched them on at night and off in the morning.

A personal reminiscence of working at the watercress beds in Bourne by John Stennett was added to this web site last week and on the same day The Times reminded us that the growing of this excellent salad crop was a preoccupation at many places in England where there was an abundant supply of flowing water that was necessary for its production. Coincidentally, the place they featured was St Mary Bourne near Whitchurch in Hampshire, which also takes its name from the brook or burn that runs through the village and provided the right conditions for the growth of this vegetable that was so popular during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

So much watercress is grown at St Mary Bourne that it has become the biggest source in Europe but the owners, the Vitacress company, want to build on that success by adding 10 per cent to their production capacity. The development however has not met with the approval of local people and the original planning application for the proposed expansion has been withdrawn for revision following objections.

Our own watercress industry was established by Edwin Nathaniel Moody in 1896 on land adjoining St Peter’s Pool and production soon became so prolific that wholesale supplies were regularly sent by rail to markets in London and Leicester. By 1911, production was at its peak and further plantations were established at the rear of Harrington Street, land that is now Baldwin Grove, and at Kate’s Bridge. The cress beds were eventually taken over by Spalding Urban District Council in 1955 who kept them going until 1969 when they were bought by the South Lincolnshire Water Board who continued to run them until April 1974 when they were closed down and filled in and so an important industry was lost to Bourne.

This is a pity because watercress is enjoying a new reputation as one of the healthiest foods you can possibly eat, rich in vitamins and other nutrients, and would therefore be a welcome addition to our diet if the locally grown product were immediately available, bunched and freshly picked, rather than the packaged variety from the supermarkets which, I am advised, is less beneficial.

Thought for the Week: Near the castle hill is a strong spring called Peter’s Pool, or Bourne Wellhead, the water of which runs through the town and is copious enough to furnish a water supply for Spalding. – Willingham Franklin Rawnsley in his book Highways and Byways of Lincolnshire, published in 1914.

NOTE: Detailed illustrated histories of Bourne’s water supply and the watercress industry can be found in A Portrait of Bourne on CD-ROM, now in its third edition.

Saturday 10^th August 2002

Until now, we have depended mainly on fictionalised tales of his exploits, usually drawn from the romantic historical novel Hereward the Wake, written in 1866 by the Rev Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), clergyman, novelist and poet, while staying at Edenham vicarage. He embellished the legends of the titular hero by painting him as a reckless gallant who for some time successfully opposed the Norman Conquest between 1070 and 1072. A similarly colourful account of Hereward's exploits was written in 1926 by Christopher Marlowe (not to be confused with the 16th century dramatist of the same name) in his book Legends of the Fenland People in which he appears to have drawn heavily on Kingsley, and as these works were available in schools for several years afterwards and were used as teaching aids, which was my experience, this would explain why so many of the older generation today firmly believe in our hero's fictional rather than his factual pedigree and background.

There are many other similar tales and although Hereward’s existence does have a solid core of truth, the exploits that surrounded him have been dismissed mainly as fiction. But I am told by David Roffe, honorary research fellow in the Department of History at Sheffield University, that scholars are reappraising the sources of the Hereward stories that tend to give greater substance to his existence than was credited before.

“It now seems clear”, he said, “that they contain far more authentic information from the 11th century than was previously thought and the time has therefore come for a reassessment of his reputation. There is also a new understanding of the background to the Domesday survey of 1086 and this too makes a connection between Bourne and Hereward less impossible. In the light of this research, the Hereward stories make a lot of sense of the hitherto unexplained problems in the formation of the barony of Bourne and it seems clear to me that Hereward was a king’s thegn, or major landholder, and it is more than likely that Bourne was part of his patrimony.”

David has first hand knowledge of Bourne and much of his early work as an historian was carried out with various archaeological units in Lincolnshire, notably in 1985 when the site next to the Abbey Church was excavated prior to the building of the new vicarage and he has written extensively on the early history and topography of the town. This led him to undertake further research on Hereward and a wider interest in the Domesday Book that has provided important new evidence for a radical re-interpretation of it and even a re-dating of the book itself which may have been the work of William Rufus (1056-1100) and not William the Conqueror (1027-1087) as is currently thought. David added: “This has led me to re-examine the Hereward traditions, together with other historians who are engaged on similar work. All of this revisionism has provoked considerable interest and as many other scholars have subsequently taken a renewed interest in these sources, I am sure there are new revelations to come.”

David also suggests that there is too much undue scepticism about the existence of a castle in Bourne. There have been many attempts in recent times to discover something more definite about such a building, most importantly in 1861when archaeologists made a detailed survey of the area and published a supposed plan of the castle revealing the lower parts of two circular towers, a short distance to the west of the earthen mound that can still be seen in the Wellhead Gardens, a courtyard and moats, but it has never been established whether these features were the remains of a castle or of a large manor house. One thousand years ago, Bourne was the caput or ruling centre of a barony, which almost always had a castle, and references to the castle of Bourne occur from the reign of King John (1167-1216) and it is illustrated on at least one mappa mundi, or map of the world, from the 14th century, showing earthworks that are accepted by most experts in this field as those of a 12th century motte and bailey.

“It is of course, misguided to talk about a pre-Conquest castle”, said David, “but there is at least an outside chance that there was some lordly residence on the site and only archaeology can determine that.” 

An article by David Roffe Hereward the Wake and the Barony of Bourne - A reassessment of a Fenland legend has been included in the CD-ROM A Portrait of Bourne, now into its third edition, and containing almost 1,400 photographs and 350,000 words of text, outlining the history of this town and the people who lived here from the earliest times to the present day. If you wish to have a copy, you may access an order form from the front page of the web site.

WHAT THE LOCAL PAPERS ARE SAYING

In my early years as a reporter almost half a century ago, I wrote the horoscopes on two occasions, once for a local newspaper and later for a national daily. This was a chore that was given in those days to many a young journalist who needed nothing more for the task than a copy of Old Moore’s Almanac, a familiarity with the signs of the zodiac and a little imagination, and you could soon gain a reputation as a budding Gipsy Petulengro, the famous Romany fortune teller. I also had a lot of fun with my friends, predicting glad tidings or sorry outcomes on their birthdays and wedding anniversaries, but no one ever took it seriously because it was accepted that horoscopes were nothing more than mild amusement when reading the newspaper with the morning coffee.

I was therefore surprised to find that The Local has engaged the services of a young lady, Katie Lancashire, who will be writing horoscopes for them on a regular basis in the future and that her qualifications for the job are “premonitions, a fantastic memory, intuition and visions” as well as claiming to be clairvoyant. She also dabbles with tarot cards, palmistry, handwriting analysis, birth charts and of course, the inevitable crystal ball, all the hocus-pocus of this particular brand of fantasy. As these attributes appear to have been acquired by the age of 24, one would have thought that she would not be living around Bourne, writing for The Local and “taking party bookings for groups of six or more people”, but living a life of luxury in St Tropez, the Bahamas, or some other exotic location on the profits of her predictions.

Clairvoyance is the alleged power of perceiving things beyond the natural range of the senses, possessing great insight and even the ability to foretell future events, and I would therefore have thought that anyone should tread carefully when claiming to be so gifted. But there it was in cold print, and as my mother used to say, it must be true because it was in the newspapers. We look forward to Katie’s column in the coming weeks with great anticipation and hope that she does not let us down although I cannot help thinking that The Local would be far better occupied in devoting its attentions to real news of interest and value to the public who buy it rather than devoting valuable space to the world of make believe.

The deep concern that is felt by most people about the loss of our bobbies on the beat was highlighted in a commendable front-page article by the Stamford Mercury last week (August 2nd). Policemen patrolling the streets is a reassuring sight for those who fear that crime is on the increase and threatening their quality of life, something about which old people are particularly apprehensive, and although the newspapers have carried letters from the public voicing their anxieties, this is the first real attempt by the local press to tell us exactly what is going on. The newspaper has begun a debate on an issue of vital importance to our future personal security and one that needs a public airing although I fear that the writing is on the wall for a uniformed presence in the future and no one knows this better than the Chief Constable of Lincolnshire, Mr Richard Childs.

A similar thought-provoking article about the future of care homes in Lincolnshire was given front page treatment by the Stamford Mercury this week (August 9th) and both these stories are a good example of the type of journalism we should expect from our local newspapers. Coverage of the various events, fetes and competitions, parties and other celebrations, do have a place in the newspapers but serious reporting should always take precedence and it is to be hoped that the Mercury will continue with this trend.

The front page story in yesterday’s issue of The Local (August 9th) brought back memories of an almost identical case that I reported during the last century. The Bourne tale tells of two lodgers at a council house in Recreation Road who are facing the prospect of being made homeless because their landlady has died and they must vacate the property. The owners of the property, South Kesteven District Council, have no legal duty to re-house them and in the pecking order of available accommodation, the two men come way down the list after single mums and even asylum seekers. In the 1960s, a middle-aged man at Old Fletton, near Peterborough, suffered the same fate when his mother died. She was the tenant of the council house where he had been brought up and in later years he had even paid the rent but the local authority ruled that he had no right to remain and he was evicted.

Local councillor John Kirkman, who sits on the town, district and county councils, is suitably outraged at this example of petty bureaucracy here in Bourne, for he is reported as saying: “It seems to me that in this day and age of equal rights, men should be given as much priority to be re-housed. It should apply to all sections of the community and the legislation ought to be looked at.” His indignation is well placed but his words are familiar because they are more or less the same as those expressed by local councillors in the Old Fletton case that aroused a national outcry almost 40 years ago and yet in the intervening years, nothing has been done and it is doubtful if there will be any action to change things in the future.

There were violent storms again over the town this week which meant that The Local reported thunder and lightning for the second time in a fortnight. It would appear that in the intervening period, the editor has invested in a good English dictionary for his newsroom staff because after using the spelling lightening twice in the same news item on August 2nd, they got it right this week.

The falling levels along the Bourne Eau and St Peter’s Pool as a result of excessive water extraction was the subject of a page lead story by the Herald and Post (August 1st). The Wellhead Gardens are one of the most attractive places in Bourne to while away an hour or two but this place loses much if its charm when the waterway, and especially the pool, are clogged with algae as a result. This is no reflection on the Bourne United Charities who own the land and do an excellent job in keeping it presentable for public use. The blame rests with Anglian Water who year after year take out more water from these underground sources than they can bear. A more detailed story was also used in my web site Diary and I am surprised that neither The Local nor the Stamford Mercury carried this item. I would therefore commend to their reporters the maxim of my old editor that the best tales are to be found out there in the streets and not sitting in the office waiting for the phone to ring.

Thought for the Week: Balderdash. I said balderdash. Piffle. Rubbish. Tosh and gibberish. Also twaddle, trash, fudge, flapdoodle, drivel and flummery. I wrote it, so I ought to know. But just because this verbiage is in print, somebody will believe it. – Sir William Connor (1909-1967), Cassandra of the Daily Mirror, after contributing an anonymous astrological prediction to his newspaper.

NOTE: What the local newspapers are saying will be a regular feature of this Diary in the future.

Saturday 17^th August 2002

Few people realise that Mays began the manufacture of racing cars here in secret. He had won a formidable reputation on the track driving tuned-up production cars but he was spurred on to build an all-British racing car after seeing the efficiency of the German cars in action and shortly before his father, Thomas Mays, died in 1934, he bought the orchard and some land adjoining the family home in Eastgate for the erection of his engineering workshops but only a few close friends knew exactly what he was doing there. It was left to the Stamford Mercury to tell the world in two exclusive stories that appeared in their pages that Britain was about to make an assault on the international racing circuits and challenge the current Continental aces with super cars that had been built in Bourne.

On Friday 25th May 1934, the newspaper reported:

Raymond Mays, the famous Bourne racing motorist, is hard at work preparing a surprise for the crack drivers of the Continent, who in recent years have wrested from Britain several important motor-racing records. Assisted by a small following of skilled mechanics, he is building in the heart of Bourne three super-racing cars with which he hopes to carry off for Britain some very important races at the expense of foreign drivers. Few people in Bourne are aware of the fact that under their noses, as it were, there are being born three racing cars which may well make history when they appear on the track. Although there is no actual secrecy about this very important work, it has not been broadcast to anybody and everybody, and consequently many residents of the town in which the work is being carried out have no inkling as to what is going on.

In the grounds of Eastgate House, where Mr Mays lives, there has grown up in the past few months a two-story workshop-garage of asbestos, in which the three new cars - ERA's - are being assembled. The site of the workshop was formerly an orchard, and the building is so situated that unless one were on the lookout for it, one would pass by without having any idea of its presence. It stands well back from the road and is well surrounded by buildings and high walls.

ERA, the style of the cars, hides the identity of a company of English Racing Automobiles Ltd, which is financing the venture. The prime movers in the concern are Mr Raymond Mays and Mr Humphrey Cook, the veteran racing motorist.

A director of the company is Mr Peter Berthon, a clever young car designer whose brain is behind the construction of the car. It is expected that they will be capable of a speed of nearly 150 miles an hour. The engineer-designer of Blue Bird, the car in which Sir Malcolm Campbell set up the world's motor speed record, Mr Reid Railton, also assists in the work. Mr Berthon has been responsible for the design of the engines, and Mr Railton has produced the chassis.

Work has gone on day and night for some months in the workshop, which is packed with up-to-date machinery such as is not to be found anywhere else in the country. A whole week was spent by a mechanic on the machining and polishing of the cylinder head of one of the engines in an effort to make the work absolutely dead accurate. At the moment three engines of 9,12 and 16 horse power respectively, are under construction. Brooklands will be the scene of the first tests of the cars when they are completed, after which they will participate in the Mannin Reg and Mannin Boar races in the Isle of Man, two of the most important motor-racing events which attract British drivers.

Three months later, the newspaper followed up their story with yet another scoop on Friday 7th September 1934 by reporting the fantastic speeds that were being achieved by the cars from Bourne. This report said:

Further successes for the new ERA (English Racing Automobile) cars, which were recently built in secret at Bourne under the direction of Mr Raymond Mays and Mr Humphrey Cook, two famous figures in the motor racing world, were gained last week when two ERA's appeared on the Brooklands track. When the first car - with a 1500 cc engine - was built, it met with little success and much hard luck at its initial appearance on the track. Little daunted by this early set back, a second car with an engine of 1100 cc cylinder capacity was constructed and on August Bank Holiday, both cars broke class records.

Last week, the terrific acceleration of the cars was demonstrated on the Brooklands track when several successes by both Mr Mays and Mr Cook were obtained. In the larger capacity car, Mr Mays put up the record for the standing start kilometre (Class F) to 85.35 miles an hour from 83.09. The amazing acceleration of the car was demonstrated in the standing start mile when an average speed of 96.03 mile an hour was reached against the previous best of 92.33. As an illustration of the car's amazing pick-up, Mr Mays was travelling at just under 140 miles an hour at the end of the mile, this speed being attained in less than two-thirds of a minute!

The second ERA, driven by Mr Humphrey Cook, was just as successful. In the standing kilometre (Class G), Mr Cook reached an average speed of 79.75 miles an hour, against the old figure of 78.33 and over the standing start mile, he averaged 88.91, this increasing the old record by 5.71 miles an hour.

The rest, as they say is history. Despite a break in production during the Second World War from 1939-45, Mays developed his cars to such perfection that the BRM, as it became known, won the world championship in 1962 and the company's Number One driver Graham Hill, father of the present day Damon, became world champion at the same time. This accolade from world motor racing was marked by a civic reception held by the old Bourne Urban District Council at the Town Hall in March 1963 when Hill was presented with a silver salver for his achievement. Mays himself was to be honoured in 1978 with a CBE for his services to motor racing but died two years later at the age of 80.

Detailed illustrated biographies of Raymond Mays and his father Thomas Mays, together with the story of the BRM success, can be found in A Portrait of Bourne on CD-ROM that may be obtained by completing an order form.

Farmers already have such a poor reputation at the moment that one would have thought them ready to improve their public image but that is apparently not so. Earlier this week, we were returning home from Stamford on the A6121 when we were slowed down by a large tractor towing a trailer piled high with baled straw just cut from a cornfield and so badly loaded that it was shedding a shower of stalks as it went, falling on the traffic behind that was reduced to snail’s pace by its progress. Both our speed and our visibility therefore were impaired from the other side of Toft village until the outskirts of Bourne by which time there must have been a tailback of fifty or more cars and yet the tractor driver made no attempt to obey the rules of the road by pulling over and allowing them to pass.

There was no tarpaulin over the bales which were secured only by a couple of ropes and they looked so insecure that we expected them to topple over any moment, taking the tractor and trailer with them and causing a nasty accident, and we therefore kept a safe distance but this did not protect us from the continuous cloud of straw that thickened each time the trailer lurched towards the roadside verge and into the trees, dislodging more of its load. We eventually joined the main A151 into Bourne but the tractor continued on its way into the town centre, leaving a trail of corn crop litter as it went that is no doubt still lying in the kerbside today. Farmers seem to think that the Highway Code does not apply to them, dropping mud on the carriageway in winter and straw debris in summer, while their vehicles continually cause great inconvenience to other drivers. This was a blatant example of such undisciplined conduct and they cannot possibly expect to win public support for their various causes while they continue to flout the rules of the road in this way.

What the local papers are saying

The loudspeakers at the Burghley Arcade in Bourne have been playing classical music of late in an attempt to deter the unruly element that insists on congregating in public places, causing great annoyance to shoppers and others going about their business. This ploy has been tried at shopping precincts in several parts of the country with some success because those who skateboard, swear, spit, snort, and pursue other anti-social habits, prefer the sound of rap and rock to rhapsody and rondo. The Local told us (on August 9th) that the soothing sounds of symphonies and serenades had little effect here in Bourne because in one weekend, a shop front was damaged by hooligans playing football, a fruiterer’s premises were vandalised and the car park showered with broken glass. The moral is a simple one: Bach and Beethoven cannot do the job of our boys in blue who were no doubt back at the station canteen listening to pop music.

The Lincolnshire Free Press carries so few items from Bourne that when it does have a reasonable tale to tell it commands our attention as it did this week with a feature about the town football club’s proposed new stadium (August 13th). This is not a new story, having been well aired elsewhere before, but it stood the paper in good stead as part of their roundup for the forthcoming soccer season and enabled them pull in a lot of advertising copy to support it, which is after all the name of the game, especially for an out of town newspaper. Lifelong supporter Len Pick, a retired farmer, has donated six acres of land off Meadow Drove where the club plans to build a new £500,000 ground and stadium to replace their present location at the Abbey Lawn where the Wakes have played since 1883, perhaps even earlier. Although there is still a great deal of fund-raising to go before the scheme comes to fruition, the club hopes to be there in readiness for the 2004-05 playing season.

Most of the newspapers this week carried extensive coverage of the raft race on the River Welland that has become an annual attraction at Deeping St James for the past six summers with The Local devoting five pages of pictures to the event, eye-catching and well laid out, but it would have looked better in colour (August 16th). This newspaper also took top marks for its report on the A level results, covered in a front page story (August 16th) and a page of results from the main schools inside. This is local reporting at its very best and the editor obviously knows the old journalistic adage that every name is a reader.

The Stamford Mercury struggled to fill its front page with a tale of supposed progress on redesigning the town centre at Bourne, a scheme that was announced a year ago, but this turned out to be a damp squib with very little movement on the project although it included plenty of promises of jam tomorrow. The newspaper also carried a story telling us that Bourne’s “long-awaited household waste recycling centre has now opened on Saturdays and Sundays” but I have news for them: it actually opened four months ago, as reported in this Diary on May 4th.

What the local papers are not saying: I revealed last week that scholars researching Hereward the Wake have found new evidence that the Saxon rebel had close connections with Bourne, an issue of great controversy among historians over the years. The life and times of the patriot who opposed the Norman Conquest between 1070 and 1072 is now being re-assessed and as the reputation of Hereward is revered in this town, I would have thought that our newspapers could have found a few column inches to tell their readers of these latest findings. Not so. Hereward it seems, comes way down the pecking order of importance in their news schedules, as do other similar subjects from our history and heritage, which is a pity because there are many people out there who are just as interested in these matters as they are in the Deepings’ raft race.

Thought for the Week: 94% of 4,677 callers who took part in a telephone poll this week said they were fed up with sport on television. – ITV Teletext, Wednesday 14th August 2002.

Saturday 24^th August 2002

Two leather bound scrapbooks dealing with the life and times of Charles Frederick Worth are destined for Bourne where they are to go on public display.

They are being donated by his descendants, notably his great great grandson Christian Worth, who now lives and works as a life and business coach at East Grinstead in West Sussex. He collected them from the family in France earlier this year and negotiations for a permanent place in the town have been going on through this web site ever since.

It is planned to deposit them with the Civic Society for display in the Heritage Centre at Baldock’s Mill. The chairman Mrs Brenda Jones and her husband Jim, who care for the building, have earmarked a table top display cabinet for them and begun arrangements for a small exhibition of photographs and other ephemera in an upstairs area to be known as the Charles Worth Room. Final details still have to be agreed with Christian Worth but it is hoped to have an official handover in the autumn.

Charles Worth was born at Wake House on 13th October 1825. He left school at the age of 11 and the following year went to London to work for the linen drapery firm of Swan and Edgar and later with the royal silk mercers Lewis and Allenby. When he was 20, he boarded a ferry for France and headed for Paris, hoping to make his mark in the millinery trade and after many trials and tribulations, opened his own business known as Maison Worth in 1858. By 1871, he was employing 1,200 people and his gowns were exported throughout the world.

Worth was in fact, the founder of haute couture with an international reputation and when he died in 1895 at the age of 69, there were 2,000 people at his funeral including the President of the Republic. The scrapbooks that are coming to Bourne deal with his death, the newspaper cuttings and the cards and messages of condolence that were sent to his family from all parts of the globe. Both albums are embossed with his initials CFW on the covers.

I have been in touch with Christian Worth for almost a year and negotiations for the albums began earlier this summer when he returned from France and asked me to help him make arrangements to deposit them with the town’s museum. I contacted the Civic Society who accepted the offer with great enthusiasm, knowing that such exhibits would boost visitor attendance at the Heritage Centre. It is proposed that the books are given to Bourne on loan for an indefinite period and that access will always be available to any member of the Worth family who wishes to inspect them. There will also be a proviso that they are insured for damage or loss, which will be a costly item for the custodians, but I am sure that all of these conditions will be met. The organising committee at Wake House were concerned that they may be left out of the new arrangement but it has been agreed that as this is Charles Worth’s birthplace, they will have some display material relating to the albums, most possibly a catalogued list of their contents.

The handover of the books is expected to coincide with the unveiling of a blue plaque on Wake House in October to the memory of Charles Worth. There was a small metal plate commemorating his birth fixed to the outside wall by South Kesteven District Council but this was removed during restoration work three year ago and was never replaced. Blue plaques are the responsibility of English Heritage to draw attention to buildings of interest because of their associations with famous people, provided they have been dead for at least 20 years and (1) are regarded as eminent in their profession, (2) have made some important contribution to human welfare or happiness, (3) had such an outstanding personality that the well-informed passer-by immediately recognises the name, or (4) simply that they deserve recognition. Charles Worth has been adjudged as falling into one or more of these categories.

Christian Worth has been asked to unveil the blue plaque at the same time that the two albums are officially handed over and the town’s heritage will be richer for it because a memorial to Charles Frederick Worth in Bourne is long overdue. This would also be an opportune time for the name of Wake House to be changed to Worth House in his memory. Perhaps the organising committee might like to consider this between now and the autumn.

One of my favourite photographs on this web site is that of the stone bridge at Lolham that I took some three years ago. I remember it well because it was a beautiful autumn day and I had to clamber over fences, through barbed wire, dodge a herd of curious cattle and then climb gingerly down the river bank towards the edge of the water, the best vantage point for my shot, and I almost slipped in while taking it but managed to return to the safety of my car, quite breathless but with the film intact.

Lolham is best known as a railway crossing over the main east coast line near West Deeping, ten miles south of Bourne, but it does have a small farming community, a water mill and some historic stone bridges. The one I photographed is thought to be the oldest and it spans the Maxey Cut just a few yards from the railway line and is only wide enough to take single lane traffic. There has been a bridge at this point since Roman times and this structure of mellowed stone dates back to the 17th century but is still able to cope with regular use by modern cars and farm vehicles.

It has now been added to a new web site on Roman roads in Lincolnshire that has been launched by Biff Vernon, a maths teacher from North Somercotes near Saltfleet, who has been fascinated by tales of the Great North Road and other historic highways since he was a lad.

“Roads were always changing their course and today we have ring roads, bypasses and new carriageways as a natural evolution”, he said. “I have always been fascinated by lay-bys and bits of tarmac going nowhere, abandoned and reclaimed by weeds as old roads were straightened out, and they develop with the society that produces them. The history of a road is the history of the land it serves and it is a history that has not had much attention. I am also interested in landscape, and the development of the road and the landscape are intertwined. The English landscape is amazingly rich and with a smattering of historical knowledge and an eye for the unexpected, there is a lot to discover. The Great North Road is particularly interesting because so much of it has been replaced so often, especially by new motorways of late, that there are now substantial stretches that are just long, thin museums with very little traffic and all are worth leaving the main A1 to seek them out.”

What the local papers are saying

The only local newspaper that currently acknowledges the Internet is the Herald & Post, a puny publication editorially yet it finds regular space for a subject that concerns more than 33 million people in the United Kingdom who now use the facility. Their column called Casting the Net by Ray Wicks (August 22nd) provides an excellent service by browsing through the world wide web and recommending sites of interest while the others appear to be terrified of losing readers or even advertising to the new medium and therefore bury their heads in the sand and hope it will go away. This Luddite mentality is nonsense and The Local is the worst of the offenders, having discontinued their own Internet column that had been running uninterrupted since July 1999. I must declare an interest here because I wrote it and have never been given a reason why it was dropped but I assume that this was due to pressure from advertisers who were concerned that the column was associated with my Bourne web site where contributors to the discussion forum have frequently criticised poor service and high prices in the local shops and the newspaper does have a close association with the Bourne Chamber of Trade and Commerce. If I am wrong, perhaps they will leave a message on the Forum to explain why. They can always get Internet access at the public library.

Bourne Cemetery is one of my favourite places to visit, mainly because it is a continuing source of information about those who lived here in past times but also because it is one of the best kept in this country and this is due to supervisor Peter Ellis and his staff who keep it in such a clean and tidy condition. I was therefore pleased to read in The Local (August 23rd) that the cemetery has won through to the finals of the Cemetery of the Year Awards to be held at Scarborough next month. Success will not only be a feather in Peter’s cap but also of great credit to the town council.

The same story was carried by the Stamford Mercury and here I hark back to my observations about the Internet because this newspaper refuses to acknowledge our existence and yet this item on the cemetery (Page 2, August 23rd) carried details of its history that had been taken from this web site. I do not mind reporters lifting my material rather than going out and doing the job themselves but they could at least acknowledge where the information came from.

I have recently completed a short history of the cemetery from its opening in 1855 to the present day which can be found on my CD-ROM A Portrait of Bourne.

The ongoing controversy over the future of Bourne Hospital continues to make the headlines, this time over the town council’s refusal to accept any moves to pull the buildings down and use the site for new houses. This is a most commendable stand but what a pity that all of this talking has been going on since the hospital closed in 1998 and it is still standing empty. Councillor Guy Cudmore is particularly concerned about the need for this medical facility to be restored and The Local (August 23rd) quotes him as telling the council meeting: “We will soon reach a critical point when people will be dropping dead in the street and only then will the need for a hospital be recognised. It will be ten years down the line before anything is done.” That may exaggerate the situation but the councillor’s dire warning does have a kernel of truth about the current medical facilities in Bourne at a time when the population is set to double in the next 15 years. An item on the same story is carried by the Stamford Mercury although their reporter does not appear to have attended the meeting because their coverage lacks the immediacy of a colourful Cudmore quote from the council chamber.

Meanwhile the new green and cream paintwork on the outside of the Angel Hotel in Bourne is still commanding space in the Stamford Mercury who report (August 23rd) that South Kesteven District Council is about to serve a notice on the owners ordering them to either suggest an alternative and acceptable colour or change the present scheme back to black and white within two months. The rights and wrongs of this case are not in doubt because the Angel is a Grade II listed building and its appearance should not be changed without prior permission but it would appear that apart from the purists, the people of Bourne do not give a hoot what colour the Angel is and it will be interesting to see the outcome of this battle of strength between bureaucracy and those behind the bar.

Thought for the Week: A confidence to a friend is no longer a secret. – an old Chinese proverb.

Saturday 31^st August 2002

If you have been offended against in some way, then forget it because the disciplinary forces that regulate our country will not recognise you but if you are the perpetrator, then counsellors and other community carers will beat a path to your door.

I speak from experience. Regular readers of this column will know that my wife and I were involved in a road accident on March 4th this year while on our way home from a shopping trip to Stamford (see Diary for March 16th). We were on the A6121 approaching the Witham crossroads when a car drove out into the path of the oncoming traffic and so a collision was unavoidable. The lady driving the other car, Mrs F, to spare her further embarrassment, stepped out of her vehicle without a ladder in her stockings. We were not so lucky. Our car was wrecked, while I and my wife, who was driving, were rushed to hospital by ambulance, a traumatic experience for two people who have never needed emergency medical help before in more than fifty years on the road, both in this country and throughout Europe, half a million miles or more without even a bump.

I have some knowledge of such accidents. As a former court reporter of many years experience, I assumed that a driver causing a major hazard to traffic on a main road in this manner would be charged with driving without due care and attention, or perhaps even dangerous driving, but that is no longer the case. Mrs F admitted blame, both in writing to me and in her statement to the police, and there were two independent witnesses, but I learn that she will not be prosecuted. In fact, she has already been let off. It is all part of the new thinking that has been adopted by the police, to the detriment of those who have suffered injury and damage to their vehicles.

Superintendent Roger Nicklin, who describes himself as the Head of Criminal Justice Support at Lincolnshire Police Headquarters, tells me that as part of their commitment to reduce road casualties, they work with the Lincolnshire Road Safety Partnership to improve driver behaviour, following certain collisions. He goes on: “This approach is based on the belief that a court appearance and penalty does not actually improve the offender’s liability to drive and therefore avoid future collisions. In this case the circumstances met the criteria for the driver to be offered a place on a Driver Improvement Course. The course, which costs the driver £145 (probably more than any likely fine), covers a wide range of collision prevention activity over twelve hours. You will see that the driver in question has had to face the consequences of her actions.”

A second letter from the Criminal Justice Unit informed me: “Mrs F has successfully completed the Driver Improvement Scheme Course and no further police action will be taken in this matter.”

It has always been my understanding of justice that anyone who breaks the law, as Mrs F clearly did, should be summoned before the magistrates to account for their conduct. Our local newspapers carry regular reports of court hearings for minor traffic infringements, often documentary, and without injury. Recent prosecutions before Bourne magistrates have included failing to stop at traffic lights, speeding, driving without an MOT certificate, driving without a licence and failing to produce an insurance certificate. One man was even prosecuted for leaving the engine of his car idling at the roadside while he went into a shop. Yet someone who shows a total disregard for the rules of the road and imperilled the lives of others is let off with a limp slap across the wrist.

Who does the Criminal Justice Support unit at Lincolnshire Police support? Certainly not us, who are innocent parties, because we have seen no one from the force, and therefore it must be the criminal. And where is the justice in someone who breaches the traffic code in such a blatant manner being given a few driving lessons by way of punishment?

We may therefore be forgiven for asking why a police force needs such a department unless it is to make it easy for those who transgress while their victims can take pot luck? The mere fact that we have a superintendent in charge of the unit is a clear indication that the police no longer have duties but jobs, and there are sure to be other similarly politically correct positions now being filled by officers who should be out enforcing the law and catching wrongdoers rather than pushing paper around their desks to the detriment of those they were appointed to serve and to protect.

Mrs F is no doubt back on the road and getting on with her life while we pick up the pieces of ours from the havoc she has wreaked upon us. This accident has taken four months out of our lives and it is doubtful if we will ever fully recover, either mentally or physically. We no longer drive anywhere unless it is absolutely necessary because we feel safer at home and we await the prognosis of a consultant orthopaedic surgeon on the long term effects of the bodily damage sustained in the crash although our loss of mobility is all too apparent.

There have been other recurring irritations that have intruded daily into our lives, even bordering on harassment, the constant form filling required by the police, insurance companies and solicitors who are acting on our behalf, yet all appear to be acting against us, even our lawyers. We were refused the full value of our wrecked car, we cannot claim for this and we cannot claim for that, even though the losses are obvious to anyone, and when the final result is known, this accident that was not of our making, will have bitten deep into our savings at a time when we depended on them to provide some comfort in old age.

We have lost out all round and unlike Mrs F, now back on the road after her driver improvement course, there is no hope of a full recovery.

It cannot be said with any truth that the August Bank Holiday here in Bourne was a happy and peaceful experience for everyone. The majority went about their business in a civilised manner but, as usual, the unruly element was waiting in the wings to cause damage wherever possible, especially after the pubs closed at night. Yobs with a bellyful of strong lager made their way home along North Road late on Sunday night, intent on destroying anything that took their fancy, and after ripping up a For Sale sign from the front of a house, they rammed it through the telephone box outside the Galletly Practice clinic. Next morning, the results of their drunken bravado was there for all to see.

This photograph was sent to me by Bob Pearson who lives round the corner in Mill Drove and who was lost for words at what he called “this depressing scene”, a masterpiece of understatement because it is a reflection of the anti-social element in our society today. Many of the culprits of this wilful damage appear to live in the vicinity of North Road because last year I reported that while wending their way home from the pubs late one night, they had wrecked half a dozen street signs (see Diary 10th March 2001) and there must surely be some parents who suspect what their sons have been up to the night before when they see them rolling home much the worse for wear and with a guilty expression on their faces.

Meanwhile, the town centre was littered with rubbish and broken glass with West Street being particularly affected on Sunday and Monday mornings, the pavements and gutters filled with the debris from a weekend’s holiday and not a street cleaner in sight. It looked as though a loaded dustcart had driven through in a gale force wind, scattering litter as it went. Our local authorities strive to keep the town clean and tidy but this is also the responsibility of those who live and shop here and as long as there are those among us who will drop their waste in the streets, then it will continue to look an unsightly mess as it did last weekend.

The kids will soon be back at school and we will be thankful for it because there are signs that they are already becoming restless with the long summer holidays. Unruly conduct in the supermarkets and shops and slovenliness in the streets unfairly gives a bad name to all youngsters when there are those who are a model of probity and good behaviour because it is this that we remember most.

On Tuesday afternoon, around 5 pm, we were walking down Abbey Road towards the town centre when my wife was hit on the head by a cup cake. This may sound like a slapstick scene from a pantomime but it was no laughing matter because the confection in question was still in its paper casing and filled with currants and as it was far from fresh, it therefore constituted a missile of some account. It had been hurled at us by two boys riding past on mountain bikes, both of them around ten years old, and by the time we had recovered from the surprise of the assault, they were pedalling furiously away past the Abbey Lawn, one on each side of the road, and laughing uproariously.

A cup cake is not exactly a deadly weapon and it would need to be of some age and hurled with great force before it would even raise a bruise, but surprise can be just as deadly a weapon, especially if the victims are old people such as ourselves. It was some moments before we recovered our composure and I shouted after the miscreants, more from outrage than any thought of apprehending them, but they had no intention of stopping and soon disappeared from view in the direction of the Spalding Road, still, no doubt, cackling fit to burst at their jolly jape. I dread to think what the outcome might have been had they thrown a bottle or a brick to which they will do doubt graduate in future years.

What the local papers are saying

The story that historic albums dealing with the life and times of Charles Worth, who was born at Wake House in 1825, are coming to the Heritage Centre in Bourne for public display, was carried by two of our local newspapers, the Herald and Post (August 29th) and the Stamford Mercury (August 30th) who both gave it top of the page treatment. Worth, who found fame and fortune in Paris as the founder of haute couture, dressing the world’s most famous women, died in 1895 and the two albums recording this event are being donated by his descendants. The Local, however, did not think this a worthy enough news item to inform their readers, preferring to fill their pages instead with advertising and astrology. In fact, the amount of news coverage in this newspaper shrinks by the week and so we must look elsewhere to find out what is going on in the town.

The Local made no mention either of the sad news that our mayor, Councillor Norma Woolley, aged 67, has contracted cancer but has courageously decided to complete her year of office despite the seriousness of her illness. The Stamford Mercury (August 30th) reported her as saying: “I still want to carry on and attend meetings even if it does mean having to use a wheelchair”. A brave lady indeed who does justice to the office she holds.

Another news item that occurred almost on its doorstep but failed to make the news columns of The Local, or the Stamford Mercury for that matter, was the flooding of the grassland between the Bourne Eau and the war memorial in the Wellhead Gardens. Engineers from Anglian Water worked over the Bank Holiday weekend to repair a burst 10-inch main while dozens of mallard from around the district arrived to enjoy the new expanse of water, also attracting crowds of walkers who thoroughly enjoyed the sight. The path through the park at this point was also sealed off until the work was complete and one would have imagined that this was worthy of a picture and a few paragraphs in what purports to be our leading local newspaper. Perhaps I ought to consult their horoscopes column to find out why.

Thought for the Week: Newspapers always excite curiosity. No one ever lays one down without a feeling of disappointment. – Charles Lamb, British essayist (1775-1834).

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