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Saturday 7th May 2005
One of the most vivid memories of my boyhood was Tuesday
8th May 1945 when the war in Europe ended. It is now known as VE-Day.
Only those who lived through those dark days of the Second World War can know
the feeling of relief and excitement that flowed through the nation, resulting
in a tide of spontaneous celebration.
On that day sixty years ago I was on my way home with friends in the early
evening when someone rushed out into the street and shouted: “The war is over”.
He had just heard the announcement on the radio and was lucky to do so because
not everyone could afford to own a wireless set. The news spread as we walked on
and by the time we reached our street, the neighbours were at their front gates
gossiping excitedly. Never had I seen such jubilation and although at the age of
fourteen I did not fully realise the implications, I did know that something
wonderful had happened.
The war had begun on 3rd September 1939 and there followed five years of
depression, deprivation and death because many families had husbands and sons
serving with the armed forces and who never returned. The battles in Europe and
the Far East have been well documented but the experiences of a small boy were
on the Home Front, as it was known, which also had its problems for mothers
trying to feed and clothe their children at a time when food was rationed, money
was scarce and morale was often low.
War is associated today with faraway places or the fantasy of films and
television but those who lived through it are still haunted by memories of
families huddling together in air raid shelters for warmth and comfort, singing
loudly in a vain attempt to drown out the noise of the bombing. They remember
the shortages, the constant fear of invasion, the threat of gas attacks, the
separation of children from their parents to escape the air raids in some areas
and, above all, the sheer physical courage of those who were away fighting for
us because we back home pinned our faith in the future on our boys in uniform.
The street where I lived on the outskirts of Peterborough was under the flight
path of the enemy bombers heading for the industrial Midlands and night after
night the sirens sounded and we could hear the throbbing of the aircraft engines
as they passed overhead. It became a regular occurrence to be snatched from our
beds by our parents and bundled into blankets before rushing to the safety of
the air raid shelter, often staying there with the neighbours until dawn,
sharing our flasks of hot coffee and soup, unable to sleep because of the noise
from anti-aircraft artillery batteries at nearby airfields and gun emplacements
and dreading the return of the aeroplanes which were in the habit of dropping
any bombs they had left indiscriminately rather than return home with them.
London and the other large centres in Britain were the main targets but in the
autumn of 1941, the enemy began attacking towns and cities in the provinces. The
new tactics began on the night of November 14th, our longest and most terrifying
ordeal, when Coventry was devastated by the worst air raid of the war as the
Luftwaffe dropped 600 tons of high explosives and thousands of incendiaries,
killing one thousand civilians and destroying the cathedral.
The sirens sounded early that night and as we were hurried into the shelter, I
remember the cloudless and star-studded sky, like purple velvet strewn with
jewels that were soon blotted out by the dark shapes of enemy aircraft passing
overhead and suddenly the sky was lit up with a network of searchlight beams
trying to pinpoint the planes. The ack-ack guns opened up and everyone rushed
inside and shut the door. Children were crying and then someone started singing
to drown out the noise and soon everyone in the shelter was giving a rousing
rendering of Roll Out the Barrel and the community singing continued well into
the night until the children started to nod off.
We emerged the following morning after the all clear had sounded to hear that a
number of bombs had been jettisoned over the district and that several houses
had been hit. Our street had escaped damage but in the roadway outside the
shelter we picked up jagged metal fragments from either bombs or artillery
shells, some so large that holes had been gouged in the road by the force of the
impact, and we took them home as souvenirs. The milkman who arrived with our
morning deliveries told us that a house had been bombed a few streets away and
as he talked to my mother I thought I could hear someone screaming in the
distance.
Later that day, I went with friends to see the damage. A small crowd had
gathered outside the detached property in one of the better class residential
areas that had taken a direct hit, blowing off the entire front of the house and
leaving the rooms exposed but with their furniture intact except for the bed
which was hanging crazily in mid-air by its back legs trapped against the lintel
over the downstairs bay window. The roof collapsed in the blast, scattering
tiles and brickwork over a wide area but luckily no one had been hurt because
everyone had fled to the shelter when the sirens sounded. We learned from the
onlookers that the couple who lived there had returned to find their home
wrecked and the wife had gone into hysterics and had been taken to hospital
where she was now under sedation.
Bourne escaped the bombing except for two incidents. The most serious occurred
when the Butcher's Arms public house at No 32 Eastgate was destroyed by a German
bomber that crashed on it. The aircraft was shot down while on its way to a
bombing raid over the Midlands and nose-dived into the building that was
demolished, killing seven people inside and two of the plane’s crew. On another
occasion, four high explosive bombs were dropped on the Hereward Approved School
for Boys in what is now Beech Avenue, the huts most likely being mistaken for a
military camp, causing a great deal of damage and resulting in two casualties,
one of them Charles Sharpe V C, who worked there as an instructor, who was
injured by a splinter from the blast.
But the bombings were only part of life on the Home Front. The sight of an
orange or banana was unknown, sweets and chocolate became a rare luxury and
clothing as well as food was rationed. There was little petrol, none for use on
pleasure trips, and the few cars that were privately owned were taken off the
road and mothballed for the duration. Holidays were unknown and travel limited
to official business. Church bells were silenced, to be rung only to warn of an
invasion, windows were covered with blackout curtains to avoid showing a light
at night, carrying a gas mask whenever you went out became a ritual, queues
outside the butcher’s shops were a familiar sight because meat was in short
supply, furniture was unobtainable except for those who had been bombed out,
pubs closed most weeks when they ran out of beer, newspapers shrank to only a
few pages to preserve newsprint and women made dresses from old curtains and
bedspreads. Their motto was to make do and mend.
Most of our young men disappeared to join one of the three fighting services
while everyone else tried to do their bit for the war effort, becoming air raid
wardens, fire watchers, ambulance attendants or enlisting in the Home Guard. Dig
for Victory became the watchword and every garden, lawn and spare patch of land
was cultivated to produce as many vegetables as possible to eke out our weekly
rations, sometimes supplemented by rearing rabbits and chickens, although potato
pie and carrot soup became part of the staple and usually meatless diet.
These were the years of enforced austerity, a bitter memory for those who lived
through them. It is not then surprising that throughout the country, the war’s
end was marked over the next few days by merriment and good cheer, parades and
street parties, flags and bunting, bonfires, patriotic speeches, dancing and
singing. Everyone was smiling and there was constant talk of the boys coming
home to their loved ones. In our street, someone dragged a piano from their
parlour on to the pavement and tables erected at the kerbside were soon filled
with cups of tea, glasses of lemonade, scones, cakes and lettuce and cress
sandwiches.
There was dancing to records played on a gramophone, enlivened by one or two
mothers fortified by glasses of port and sherry that had been saved for the
occasion. The children soon ate all of the available food and the entire
neighbourhood sat there until nightfall singing popular songs, a simple act of
merrymaking acknowledging that the worst was over and a gathering that reflected
the mood of a nation rejoicing. It was also a brief respite between the horrors
of war and the battle ahead to rebuild a new Britain with a fair and
well-ordered society at peace with the world.
What the local newspapers are saying: Exotic animals are
arriving in this country by the most unusual routes. Last week we heard that a
deadly Brazilian wandering spider had bitten a chef after arriving in a box of
bananas from South America and delivered to a pub restaurant at Bridgewater in
Somerset and this week The Local reports that a viperine water snake from
Spain was found curled up in a bunch of celery at Sainsburys supermarket in
Bourne (May 2nd). This unexpected encounter gave one elderly lady customer quite
a shock but unlike the spider, it was harmless and was taken first to the nearby
veterinary centre next door in Exeter Street. The supermarket management
explained afterwards that the company sells ten million packets of celery a year
from this supplier and this is the first time such an incident has occurred and
so similar shocks for customers in the future are unlikely.
The same story is reported by the Stamford Mercury which carries a
photograph of the intruder alongside a one penny coin to demonstrate its actual
size, just six inches long, about the same as a pencil. We are also told that it
was asleep when discovered in the celery and although not dangerous, quite a
shock to an unsuspecting customer shopping for the weekly veg. RSPCA Chief
Inspector Mike Hogg, who took the snake into custody before handing it over to a
reptile centre at Wickenby, near Lincoln, put the incident in perspective when
he told the newspaper: “This was a comparatively easy capture when compared to
the three-foot long alligator I recently had to remove from a bath as well as a
tree viper whose bite would have been fatal.” All in a day’s work and yes, the
intruder has been named Celery.
One of our six district councillors, John Kirkman, a member for Bourne
East, has been elected chairman of South Kesteven District Council for the
coming year. This is of particular credit for Bourne because the current leader
of the council is another local member, Councillor Linda Neal (Bourne West), and
so this small town is doubly honoured.
The chairmanship of a local authority is not easily earned as members must
firstly show a reasonable length of service and secondly need to be accorded the
respect of the voting majority. I have known instances where admirable men have
lost their chance because they were blackballed for personal reasons that were
entirely outside the scope of the appointment but it is generally accepted that
the job goes to the one who is considered the most worthy for that year.
John Kirkman has been a district councillor for more than 20 years, having been
elected in 1983, but he sits as an Independent and so will need all of the
experience at his disposal to tackle the problems that lie ahead because the
council is controlled by the Conservative Party to which his fellow member Linda
Neal belongs. This is not meant to be a disparagement of the party but an
acknowledgement that a ruling group will have its way.
Many believe that politics should play no part in local government and that
would be an ideal situation and certainly in the interests of the public but we
have what we have and it will not change in the foreseeable future. In the final
analysis, the bulk of public money is administered at national level and that is
collected and distributed by a government elected on a party mandate and so it
is inevitable that such loyalties filter down to local level, even to the town
and parish councils where ideology should be left at the door when discussing
the more mundane matters to which they are entrusted but rarely is.
There is also the expectation in Bourne that we will be favoured during
Councillor Kirkman’s year of office but this too is an unlikely eventuality
because a chairman must be unbiased, representing the entire district rather
than a preferred locality, and it is his perceived ability to handle such a
situation that undoubtedly played a part in his nomination and subsequent
election, despite a last minute ploy by the Labour group to derail his
appointment, a most regrettable episode in the history of the council that does
them little credit.
John Kirkman takes over as chairman of SKDC at a difficult time, when local
authorities are not favourably regarded throughout Britain for varying reasons,
not least among them the unabated rise in the council tax and its primary
distribution as salaries rather than services. The public feels isolated and is
beginning to rebel against the bureaucracy and its increasing inaccessibility,
the arrogance of office and the fact that decisions appear to be taken far too
often not by their elected representatives but by paid officials who appear to
have acquired the whip hand in the administration of our affairs. There are too
many instances of the people having to confront their local councils themselves,
Wake House being a current example, because they appear to be concentrating more
on job creation and preservation rather than the interests of the community. We
do not know whether he can make a difference but he is one of our councillors
and we can only hope that he will.
Thought for the week: Britain’s state pension is one of the lowest among
the richest nations, ranking 26th out of thirty countries, including Austria,
Hungary, Italy, Spain and Turkey, who all pay more. Luxembourg came top.
–
report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Monday
2nd May 2005.
Saturday 14th May 2004
The folly of the proposal now before South Kesteven
District Council to sell off its council houses is reflected in an entry that is
currently appearing in the property columns of the local newspapers.
Estate agents are offering a semi-detached, three-bedroom house in Ancaster
Road, Bourne, for £141,500 and yet the authority has suggested that all of its
6,500 houses, flats and bungalows, be handed over to an association for £36
million, around £5,500 each which is 30 times less than the average house price
in the United Kingdom.
Although this property is not among them because it is privately owned, it is a
former council house but many others in the street still have council tenants
and will therefore be affected.
A total of 535 of the properties included in the proposed transaction are in
Bourne which has a fine record for providing council houses, not under this
authority but with Bourne Urban District Council that was disbanded in March
1974 when SKDC took over. In fact, the building of council houses by them has
been a major factor in our expansion since 1900 and nowhere is this activity
better illustrated than on the eastern side of town. Between the wars, a
considerable number of these properties were erected, both houses and bungalows.
The eastern part of the old Meadowgate Road, now called Manning Road, was
developed in 1914 and 1919 and the Alexandra Terraces were created between 1924
and 1925. Recreation Road received 42 council houses in a single year, 1928, and
between then and 1930, a further 48 properties were erected in George Street. By
1938, BUDC had built a total of 204 houses, mostly situated around the
recreation ground in Recreation Road although there were others in Dyke village.
Harrington Street, one of the biggest estates, was named after Robert
Harrington, the town's 17th century benefactor, and developed between 1936 and
1937 with a total of 44 houses and ten bungalows, all of which are in use today.
This new residential area was officially opened in 1937 by Sir Edward Campbell,
MP, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Health. Then soon after the end
of the Second World War in 1945, building started again with the creation of
additional streets and roads. Harrington Street was further extended between
1947 and 1950 with a different style of housing while 70 more homes appeared in
Ancaster Road. Queen's Road was established in 1953 with Edinburgh Crescent
adjoining and by 1960, 118 council houses, bungalows and flats were built in
these two roads while Kingsway appeared a few years later.
New building activity during the first half of the 20th century altered the
appearance of the town more rapidly than at any other time in its history. For
example, in the years between 1914 and 1970, BUDC alone erected 546 houses,
bungalows and flats while during the same period, there was extensive private
residential development on the west side of the town, stretching out towards
Bourne Wood. By 1969, there were 2,048 domestic properties in Bourne and 597
were owned by the urban district council and included houses, bungalows and
flats, some built on the sites of old demolished buildings scattered around the
town. The council boasted in its official town guide for that year: "Much
private development is also in progress which suggests that people wish to live
in Bourne. The housing, private and council, makes an attractive whole in which
anyone may be encouraged to reside."
The council houses of past years were originally designed as accommodation for
the working classes and have been built by local authorities for more than a
hundred years. Intensive building programmes during that period, especially in
the years following the two world wars, has left most localities with a row of
these distinctive houses, constructed to a simple and similar design, but
providing rented homes and gardens for families of modest means.
The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher changed the perception of
the council house when the Housing Act of 1985 included a statutory Right to Buy
entitlement, introduced to encourage home ownership, and this enabled thousands
of sitting tenants purchase the properties in which they lived at discount
prices. As owner occupiers, they could then change the appearance of their homes
to suit their own tastes and these modifications invariably started with a new front
door, a feature that distinguishes the house that is now privately owned from
that which is still rented and is much in evidence today in the council house
streets.
It is this history that brings the current proposals by SKDC into sharp relief.
With no apparent advantage in switching to a new landlord, tenants are therefore
likely to prefer to remain with the council which charges controlled rents,
provides a security of tenure and a reliable maintenance service. Why then
should they be forced to do otherwise?
We have already seen the effects on morale when council tenants are threatened
with change. An example of this is the fiasco over the proposed demolition of
the Worth House sheltered housing complex, deemed to be sub-standard which means
that it is in need of financial investment for modernisation, money that the
council is unwilling to pay. The feelings of the extremely elderly 17 residents
who called this place home were not taken into consideration and after half of
them had been forcibly moved out, the council began allocating the empty
maisonettes to homeless families because the Department of Health turned down an
application to pull them down yet the council refuses to say why.
Tales of the heartache have filled the columns of the local newspapers for
several weeks and the plight of widow Mrs Ruth Peat, aged 78, a resident since
June 2002 who has lived in Bourne since she was a toddler, is particularly
poignant and although I know her to be a strong and resolute character, she was
reduced to a state of severe stress and deep anxiety by the uncertainty of her
future. In desperation, she approached a neighbouring authority, South Holland
District Council, which has since found her a new home at Long Sutton, a damning
indictment of SKDC.
But Worth Court is only the tip of the iceberg and the need to dispose of the
rest of the council’s housing stock is also a matter of money and not of
providing services. Government guidelines dictate that local authority landlords
need to meet its Decent Homes Standard by 2010 and this could mean high
expenditure on refitting unsatisfactory kitchens, bathrooms and carry out other
refurbishments. In other words, rather than fulfil its responsibilities SKDC is
preparing to sell the properities off at knock down prices and pass the problem
on to someone else.
A final decision will be made by the council on May 26th and if the hand over is
approved, it is hoped that someone out there will exercise their rights and ask
for an investigation by the Local Government Ombudsman. Selling houses worth
£141,500 on the open market for £5,500 cannot possibly be in the public
interest.
Money appears to have become the motivating force in all decisions by our local
councils. Little by little they are shedding their responsibilities to deliver
services yet continue to increase staffing levels with the result that pay and
pensions now come before the needs of the community. Weekly refuse collections
are likely to be reduced to once a fortnight, our roads are riddled with pot
holes, there is litter in the streets and hardly the sight of a policeman on the
beat, yet vacancies are continually being advertised for obscure appointments at
£30,000 a year. There is also the prediction that another 1.5% will soon be
added to council tax bills to meet the cost of paying pensions to council
employees, such as social workers and firemen, which has risen by £247 million
to £3.75 billion.
The perception is that our county and district councils are fast becoming job
providers rather than the local authorities whose task it is to serve the
community and that does not auger well for the future that looks bleak indeed.
Sub-editors strive for the catchy headline in their newspapers and
although the task seems a simple one, it is extremely difficult to encapsulate
an event in two or three words that catch the eye. Exponents of the art end up
working for the red top national press, The Sun particularly, where they command
high salaries because one good headline can not only increase circulation but
also change the thinking of a nation and in my days as a headline writer for the
Daily Express and later the Daily Mirror more than forty years
ago, a few simple words that aptly summed up the story and caught the attention
were frequently rewarded with a bonus. Those who work on our local newspapers
often try their hand, as with the story of the snake found on the vegetable
counter in Sainsburys last week (April 29th) when The Local came up with
"Fangs for the celery" which did not quite hit the mark and the Stamford
Mercury ran their report under the banner "Snakes alive - there's an adder
in my salad!" which was far more evocative.
Another item on the front page of The Local that week featured the
mayor-making in Bourne when Councillor Judy Smith was installed as our first
citizen and Councillor Guy Cudmore as her deputy. The photograph showed
Councillor Mrs Petronella Moisey handing over after her year of office with the
headline "The changing of the chains" but in doing so, the writer missed the
opportunity for the age-old reference to "The chain gang", the description by
which mayors and council chairmen are known whenever they attend civic functions
en masse, which is of course, at every possible opportunity.
What the local newspapers are also saying: "There is nothing for us to do
in Bourne", trumpets a headline in the Stamford Mercury over a story
about local lad Gareth Larham, aged 17, complaining about the lack of leisure
facilities and entertainment for teenagers (May 13th) because, he claims, houses
are being built at the expense of recreation. But what does he want to occupy
his time? "A bowling alley, a five-a-side football pitch and a multi-screen
cinema", he says, and all of these things would be fine but hardly financially
viable for a town with a population of 15,000. Gareth needs to either widen his
horizons or look around him because the Bourne area currently has around 140
organisations that welcome newcomers and more than 40 of them offer services for
young people although youth development worker David Gosney admits that some do
not promote or advertise their work enough. There is also the new youth centre,
just opened in Queen's Road at a cost of £400,000 where youngsters can
participate in a wide range of activities from martial arts to lawn green
bowling.
I recommend that Gareth also reads this week's issue of The Local which
is full of stories about people doing things, many of them teenagers, and if
none of these act as an inspiration, then turn to the What's On page which
contains enough invitations to keep anyone busy for a week. Young people who
complain about having nothing to do often lack the initiative to go out and find
it yet those who do will invariably discover a rewarding and satisfying pursuit
among pleasant and companionable people. All it needs is the effort.
Did you know that butchers in Bourne supplied meat for Edward I when his
Parliament met at Lincoln in 1301? Or that Gilbert Fisher, a London grocer,
spent so much money on building the Red Hall at Bourne in 1605 that he was still
in debt when he died 28 years later? Or that the population of Bourne during the
first census in 1801 was a mere 1,664? Or that 29 people were arrested during
riotous celebrations in the market place to mark the end of the Boer War in
1902?
These are some of the interesting facts about our history that can be found in a
new book published this week giving a glimpse of the town from the earliest
times to the present day. The CD-ROM A Portrait of Bourne is already available
and has become the definitive history of the town but not everyone has a
computer and many prefer to have a book in their hand rather than click a mouse
or tap away at a keyboard.
However, the disc has become so extensive, with 2,500 photographs and half a
million words of text, that to publish it in hardback would fill several large
volumes, making the cost prohibitive, and so I decided on a shorter version
using dates and events, people and places and wrote it using a chronological
form of brief references. Another advantage of this method is that most people
are too busy to tackle detailed studies of their locality and prefer a
serendipity of dates and places and this has been my aim. It is certainly the
most comprehensive record of events relating to the history of Bourne ever
compiled and it is something that you can pick up and put down, or as my wife
suggests, the perfect reading for the small room.
I showed the first draft to one of our senior councillors, former mayor Don
Fisher, who himself prefers the printed word to the computer screen, and he
immediately offered to fund the production costs and initial print run and the
result is a 56-page book entitled The Bourne Chronicle that also includes almost
100 photographs, both old and contemporary, pen portraits of leading
personalities and short descriptions of important buildings together with a roll
call of all council chairmen and mayors from 1894 to the present day.
Some of the dates I have given may be challenged. For instance, it is generally
accepted that Bourne Town Football Club originated in 1883 but my research shows
that it did not survive many seasons after that and the present club was
actually formed in 1897 during a public meeting at the Nag's Head. Also, Bourne
Cricket Club rightly claims two centuries of cricketing tradition for the town
but I have established that it was actually founded at a meeting held at the
Nag's Head in 1882 and called by Dr Tom Harker who subsequently became the first
captain. There will be other dates that are the subject of debate but in the
final analysis, documentary evidence is paramount.
The Bourne Chronicle has been excellently printed locally by Warners Digital
Print and both Councillor Fisher and myself decided that the proceeds should go
to the Civic Society, of which he is a founder member. The book costs £5 and is
available from Bourne Bookworld in North Street, the offices of The Local
newspaper in West Street and from the Heritage Centre at Baldock's Mill in South
Street during weekend opening hours from 2 pm until 4 pm. There is also a mail
order facility available through this web site.
Thought for the week: I detect a sense of vulnerability,
especially among the elderly and those living alone who have an underlying dread
of being taken ill “out of hours” because we know that we cannot even speak
directly to a doctor any more, let alone see one quickly. We feel afraid that we
are at the mercy of an unqualified, two-week-trained call-centre person who has
the power to decide if we need a doctor to come out to us and afraid that if one
is indeed summoned, he or she may take hours to reach us, if they can find the
way. By the time they arrive we may be in great pain, in acute danger, or even
in an ambulance on an unnecessary trip to hospital. Or dead. – Susan Hill
writing in The Spectator, Saturday 7th May 2005.
Saturday 21st May 2005
The countryside is at its best at this time of the year,
the months of May and June turning the woods and lanes into a lush green that
make it a pleasure to be out and about. Wild flowers, however, are few, victims
over the past 50 years of the persistent use of agro-chemicals by farmers intent
on increased productivity without a thought for the devastation wrought on our
wildlife.
Most roadside verges have magnificent displays of cow parsley that have resisted
the herbicides and there are poppies that have escaped the sprays at the field’s
edge while here and there you will find patches of primroses and cowslips,
buttercups and daisies, celandines in the damper places, hawthorn blossom and
wild roses in some of the hedgerows, but the profusion of yesteryear recorded by
John Clare, the peasant poet, (1793-1864) who lived hereabouts, has gone for
good. Even if our farmers were shown the error of their ways and persuaded to
change, and there is much talk about this but very little action, it would take
some years for our countryside to recover and produce the abundance of variety
and colour that Clare so enjoyed.
His legacy of verse contains a startling originality and direction of vision
because he was born into a barely literate family and had little formal
education but he wrote from the heart and is remembered today for his
descriptions of how it was in past centuries. There is also another reminder of
what we have lost not too far distant because there are still areas of Europe
untouched by the chemical sprays and which largely replicate the English
countryside of days gone by.
I am reminded of this by a travel article in The Times in which Robin
Young describes a recent holiday at a mountainside hamlet in the Hautes-Pyrénées
of France (May 14th) where in the picturesque foothill country between the
plains and the peaks he found the roads lined with blazes of broom, trees
festooned with chandeliers of blossom, meadows crammed with buttercups,
dandelions and daisies, and banks bright with deep pink campion and vivid blue
forget-me-nots. Higher up, the alpine meadows had drifts of wild daffodils,
stands of purple orchids and blankets of immensely colourful flowers in yellows,
blues, pinks and purples. Aquilegias, violets, spurges and pansies, often as
good as those in the gardens back home, all grow wild there in abundance and in
the cirques themselves he found gentians by the hundred and harebells from which
the local hotel took its name.
Few places in England today can match such a sight and we have to turn to Clare
to remember how it was. His writings are full of flowers that have long since
either disappeared or become a rarity, among them the blue cornflower, ladysmock,
woodbine, columbine and charlock, but you need to immerse yourself in the pages
of the poet to seek out the delights that stimulated his imagination and to
share with him the wonders of the countryside as it was.
My wild field catalogue of flowers
Grows in my rhymes as thick as showers
Tedious and long as they may be
To some they never weary me
- from The Shepherd’s Calendar for the month of May (first published 1827).
For some days last week, we were delighted to have the
company of a large heron that appeared in the field of green corn behind our
houses to the north of Bourne and seemed delighted with its surroundings. Far
from being shy, it hopped along the hedgerows and fences at the bottom of the
gardens and one afternoon I came home to find it perched on the roof of a house,
standing there like a sentinel but moving its head occasionally to survey the
scene below. But most days, it just stood in the wheat field, its head showing
above the crop as though poised to move forward to peck up a morsel but usually
staying there motionless for an hour or more at a time.
The neighbourhood nature watch was soon active as one homeowner telephoned the
next to report its movements and soon our heron had become an icon for the birds
we have lost. The cuckoo, for instance, should have been here on April 14th but
we have yet to hear it while the thrushes, robins, wrens, blue tits and
yellowhammers now appear less frequently and are fewer in number.
The visit was unusual in that herons prefer water, frequenting lakes, marshes
and fens and the mud flats found on the sandy shores, feeding on fish and frogs,
molluscs and worms. Its usual habitat is most probably the Car Dyke that we can
see in the distance, and so we assume that it was attracted to our locality by
the number of fish ponds in the back gardens, much to the dismay of the owners
because most contain goldfish, Koi carp and other exotic species. But they also
eat small rodents that live in the field and so, whatever the reason for this
unexpected visit, it is doubtful that it went hungry. It stayed with us for five
days and is now gone but has delighted us with its presence.
The grey heron (Ardea cinerea) is a distinguished bird, standing around
three feet tall on long thin legs, pale grey and white in colour with a black
crest and wing edges. It is not normally so solitary because the species take
well to living in company and once a heronry has been established, birds will
return to the same site year after year.
A small heronry was opened in Regent’s Park, London, in 1968 and
another existed at Milton Park, near Peterborough, home of the Fitzwilliam
family, in the early years of the 20th century where it was painted by Robert
Gardner (1850-1926), the Bourne bank manager and talented artist whose work was
hung in the Royal Academy. It was one of his larger paintings and in June 1924,
he presented it to Peterborough Museum where it can still be seen. The
Stamford Mercury reported the gift by saying: "The picture is of great local
interest. It is 36 inches by 28 inches and represents the heronry in its old
site on the island and not in the trees of the adjoining wood as formerly. The
artist has caught the lovely effects of light and shade which linger around this
delightful spot at eventide."
From the archives: A fine specimen of the hoopoe (Upupa epops) has
been shot at Graby by Mr Scales and sent to John Evans, naturalist, of Bourne,
for preservation. This beautiful migratory bird so seldom visits us that the
most enthusiastic naturalist scarcely ever dreams of seeing it in his
peregrinations; and when it does come, how soon it falls to the sportsman. The
present specimen is a female in full plumage, the crest feathers being perfect
and the various markings good. – news report from the Stamford Mercury,
Friday 14th May 1875.
What the local newspapers are saying:
The streets of
Bourne are likely to have less rubbish if the town council introduces tougher
measures to deal with the culprits, according to a front page report in The
Local. Councillors met on Tuesday and discussed the possibility of naming
and shaming after litter louts are identified by closed circuit television
cameras, an idea that has already been successfully adopted in other parts of
the county (May 20th). The worsening situation in Bourne was highlighted by two
members, Councillor Linda Neal, who said that the town was in a disgusting state
some weekends and there were even cases of fly tipping near the Corn Exchange,
while the mayor, Councillor Judy Smith, told of a particularly disturbing
incident: “I asked some children who had dropped chip papers to pick them up and
they threw them at me”, she said. Stigmatising those who transgress is a tried
and tested remedy throughout history and is likely to work wonders among those
who deface our streets. Certainly, the experiment has had its effect in Stamford
where some youngsters whose photographs were published in the local newspaper
have apologised for their conduct and vowed to change their ways.
The Bourne Festival, a beer and music event, is going ahead after all, despite
complaints from people living in the vicinity about the noise and the yobbish
behaviour that has been experienced in previous years. The Local reports
that South Kesteven District Council has given the go ahead for the event to
take place at the Wellhead field for three days over the second weekend in June
although sound levels will be monitored throughout (May 20th). The event has
been held for the past three years, raising much needed funds for local
charities which have benefited by £20,000 and thousands have turned up to enjoy
the pop groups. It is therefore undoubtedly a good cause and a most welcome
attraction that gives pleasure to many but no one can deny that it is also a
nuisance because we can hear the din quite clearly although we live over a mile
away. In addition, the council does have a duty to monitor public nuisances and
it should not be assumed that permission to hold such events is an automatic
right. The middle way, with concessions on both sides, is always the best but
usually the most difficult course to agree on and in the final analysis, it is
the conduct of those who attend that will decide its future.
A public inquiry into the proposed housing development at The Croft in North
Road is due to be held next month but in the meantime, ideas are surfacing for
alternative uses to which this large property might be put. The latest is
outlined in a front page story by the Stamford Mercury suggesting that it
should be turned into a theatre and centre for the performing arts (May 20th)
which many will find an excellent prospect. The originator has a vested
interest, dance instructor Denise Delieu who teaches 200 children in the Bourne
area but cannot find a large enough venue, and her vision is of a building that
would become a centre for the arts, attracting audiences from a wide area to see
amateur and theatrical productions, complete with performance rooms and a café.
This is an ambitious suggestion, one that captures the imagination, while our
town mayor, Councillor Judy Smith, has put forward the alternative idea of
converting the house into the hospital to replace the one we have lost, or even
a hospice. Both are worthy considerations that would benefit this town but
neither is likely to come to fruition because of financial considerations and
the site will almost certainly be turned over to housing.
Patients at the Hereward Medical Centre in Exeter Street were told this
week they would have to wait five days for repeat prescriptions dispensed by the
Anglia Co-operative pharmacy even though it is only a few yards away across the
car park and the reason given is a fault in the computer system. These machines
were intended to make communication more efficient yet so many organisations are
unable to deliver their services when they fail. Perhaps we have become too
dependent on them.
Years ago, most general practitioners were their own dispensers of pills and
potions and you collected them immediately. Even if the requirement were out of
surgery hours, they would be deposited in a box outside or in the porch although
such a free and easy and very convenient method would certainly not be allowed
today under the restrictive practices that regulate our lives. On one occasion,
around 1970, I telephoned our family doctor late in the evening for pills
urgently needed by our son and he said that they would be left outside within
five minutes, as indeed they were.
Modern technology may have improved many spheres of public communication but in
medical care they have merely added to the barrier that has been erected between
doctor and patient. A five-day wait for medication is totally unacceptable but
then even in normal circumstances, when the systems are working as they should,
I am told that the usual wait is three days. Computer failures appear to be the
excuse that many use for total inefficiency and although there may be
justification for delays in certain circumstances, if anyone cannot get a prescription
dispensed on the day that it is written, then there is something radically wrong
with the service and it is those who run it who are to blame.
Where our money goes – then and now: Policing in Lincolnshire will cost
£29.65 million in the coming financial year for 1987-88. The police committee
was told that the figure for maintaining law and order in the county was an
increase of £853,650 on the previous year, caused by pay rises, an increase in
the number of officers, the re-organisation of the drugs squad and rising
operational costs. – news report from the Stamford Mercury, Friday 16th
January 1987.
Policing in Lincolnshire will cost £91.6 million during the current year
2005-06. This is an increase of £4.7 million on last year, mainly caused by
increases in pay and pensions. – budget statement from Lincolnshire Police
Authority, April 2005.
Thought for the week: Learn to love the dandelion.
– advice to those
who garden but are getting that bit older.
Saturday 28th May 2005
It is gratifying to hear of preservation schemes that
enable our old buildings continue to provide a useful service for the town
especially when they are the result of individual initiative. For the past few
weeks, Sally Lewis and a dedicated band of workmen and voluntary helpers have
been busy renovating the old commercial buildings in Eastgate, overlooking the
Queen’s Bridge, once the home of Bourne’s first department store.
She is the owner of Attica, the furniture shop that until recently was trading
from Cherryholt Road, but hearing that the property was on the market, decided
to widen her horizons. Her new premises on the corner of Willoughby Road and
Victoria Place are now open for business, a venture that perpetuates retail
trading on this site for almost 150 years.
The original store was opened by John Branston in 1860, selling a wide range of
goods including household linen, curtains and fabrics, boots and shoes, men and
women’s clothing, candles and groceries, and soon became the biggest retail
outlet in the town, surviving a big warehouse fire on the night of Thursday 28th
October 1908. The Stamford Mercury reported the following Friday:
On Thursday evening a serious outbreak of
fire occurred on Mr Branston's premises in Eastgate. Mr Branston occupies a
grocery and drapery premises in Eastgate and just opposite the entrance to the
shop is a warehouse in which is stored brushes, candles, firelighters &c., on
the ground floor and heavier goods on the top floor, which included on Thursday
last a box of boots which had not been unpacked. Mr Branston was returning home
on Thursday evening when he noticed a volume of smoke in the vicinity of the
premises and on arriving home found it was issuing from his warehouse. On
opening the warehouse door, the volume of smoke burst into flames. Buckets of
water were immediately thrown on the flames and with some assistance the fire
was extinguished before it spread to any of the adjoining premises. As it was,
considerable damage was done to some of the stock in the warehouse by fire and
water. The loss is fully covered by insurance.
Mr Branston also built a pair of houses next door in Willoughby
Road that bear his initials and the date 1900 and he lived in one of them in
retirement after handing over the business to his only son, Thomas Elmore
Branston. In 1909, Thomas built the present premises of yellow brick and blue
slate, the same materials used for a terrace of new houses erected in the
Austerby a few years later. A stone plaque on the front records the date of
construction together with his initials TEB while the name Branston has been
picked out in mosaic in the front doorway.
In 1913, the business was sold to George Bett who had wide experience of the
retail trade, having been apprenticed to a grocer and draper at Mareham-le-Fen,
near Horncastle, Lincolnshire, and in 1895 went to work at the Bon Marché at
Brixton, London, built in 1878 and the first department store to be established
in Britain, employing 400 people who all worked and resided on the premises. He
left there to set up in business with his brother at East Kirkby, near Spilsby,
Lincolnshire, known as "Bett Brothers, Universal Providers", a portent for the
future, because when he moved to Bourne he fulfilled his ambition to set up his
own department store selling everything except uncooked meat, fresh fish and
alcoholic drinks (he was a Methodist lay preacher and teetotaller) as well as
being a sub-postmaster.
Mr Bett ran the business for 33 years during which time he became one of the
town’s leading citizens, making a significant contribution to local affairs as a
member of Bourne Urban District Council, being elected in 1923 and becoming
chairman twice, in 1928-29 and again in 1936-37.
When he retired in 1946, the business was sold to Messrs L and H Hayhurst who
remained there until 1970 when the building was bought by Geoffrey Worley, a
former RAF serviceman, who used it for a furniture retail business known as
Kinnsway and it remained in his family until 2005, the clock dial over the main
entrance bearing their name. The shop closed 1985 when the firm moved to new
premises in South Street, now run by his twin sons Barry and Michael, and the
Eastgate property has since been used for storage although an application to
turn it into flats was submitted to South Kesteven District Council in 2003 but
the scheme did not materialise.
The new owner has retained many desirable features in the premises including
Victorian wood-panelled rooms, fireplaces and period doorways and windows. “It
is a spacious and stylish old building”, said Miss Lewis, “the biggest shop in
Bourne until Budgens opened and I have retained as much of the original as
possible.”
Some may consider that the shop is a little out of the way in these times of
centralised shopping and there may be some truth in that. But it is worth
remembering that the premises have a formidable retail pedigree because in the
days when it was run by George Bett, everyone knew of it and everyone shopped
there. Sally Lewis cannot expect such widespread support today but she deserves
to succeed in her venture if only because she has given a new lease of life to
one of our familiar Victorian buildings.
May is the month when Mother Nature paints the hedgerows white with
blossom and we can see it in profusion and sample its bitter sweet smell
wherever we go. It is at its most prolific in the thickets and hedgerows that
line the fields and meadows between Bourne and Stamford and along the route of
old railway lines where the hawthorn trees have been left unattended since the
services closed down.
We see these hawthorn trees in such profusion because they were often planted as
windbreaks and boundary hedges and they can reach a height of thirty feet and
live to a great age and in addition to this utilitarian purpose, they provide us
with this magnificent display of delicate white blossom every spring. Indeed,
haw is also an old word for hedge, hence the association.
The hawthorn is steeped in folklore and tradition and many country folk believe
that the flowers still bear the smell of the Great Plague of London. Certainly,
the hawthorn was once regarded as sacred, probably from a belief that it
furnished the crown of thorns for Christ at the crucifixion and the device of a
hawthorn bush was chosen by Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, because a small
crown from the helmet of Richard III was discovered hanging on a hawthorn tree
after he had been defeated at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485, hence the
saying: "Cleve to thy crown though it hangs on a bush."
Another piece of folklore was that you should never smell the scent of the
blossom because it would induce you to wet the bed and of course the hawthorn
has a long tradition of medicinal uses, not least as a diuretic which may
explain the aversion to this most wonderful of flowers that many pass by
unnoticed. Seek them out while they are still with us.
What the local newspapers are saying: The search is on to find Britain’s
best market town and the Stamford Mercury suggests that Bourne might well
fit the bill (May 27th). A photo feature highlights the benefits on offer,
location, history, facilities and new development, which all add up to a modern
success story. The competition is run annually by Country Life magazine
and the standards are high, taking into account vibrancy, architecture,
accessibility, transport, amenities and the range of shops, but our
newly-elected mayor, Councillor Judy Smith, thinks we are in with a chance
because she told the newspaper: “Bourne is very forward looking and the people
here are fantastic. There is a very caring community and the facilities,
especially the schools, are excellent.”
Complaints about access to the Town Hall continue and The Local reports
that another pensioner, Mrs Connie Glover, aged 72, has written to the town
council saying that she is unable to attend its meetings because she suffers
from angina and can no longer climb the stairs to reach the public gallery after
her condition worsened (May 27th). Earlier this year, Ted Kelby, aged 79, who is
also disabled, said that he was having similar difficulties and that an
alternative venue should be found. “I can understand that the council cannot
solve its access problems overnight”, said Mrs Glover, “but I am calling on them
to move venues so that people like Ted and myself who have a passion for council
business can attend.”
The interest and support of these two spirited citizens is commendable but this
does seem to be a drastic solution. The town council, however, must take these
complaints seriously because they have the latest legislation under the
Disability Discrimination Act of 1995 on their side and as this states that
access must be available for the physically handicapped, then the council may
have to hold its meetings elsewhere to accommodate them. Other locations have
already been discussed but this would not appear to be the best way forward. The
town hall is the focal point of our local administration and it would be
ridiculous to send the town council elsewhere merely to comply with an obscure
regulation, however well intentioned, and one that will benefit only one or two
people.
A stair lift at the side entrance would appear to be the answer, easily fitted
and unobtrusive, but the perfect way to assist the disabled. There are
limitations on the alterations that can be made to a listed building, the Town
Hall being scheduled Grade II, but it is doubtful if this equipment would fall
foul of the regulations. This has been the solution to the same problem at other
historic buildings in the area, notably to the town halls at Market Deeping and
Stamford, where the stair lifts have been fitted and already established their
usefulness. Perhaps our local councillors should go and take a look for
themselves before committing themselves to the costly alternative of a new venue
for their meetings.
Shop watch: The best time for planting the herbaceous borders, hanging
baskets and patio tubs is this weekend, the spring Bank Holiday, when overnight
frosts are hopefully past, and so it has become the busiest time of the year for
our garden centres. As someone who buys rather than grows their own surfina,
begonias, fuchsias, petunias and marigolds, I look around for the most
convenient place and with North’s Garden Centre in Burghley Street and the
Woodview Nursery in South Road having closed, I have been going further afield,
although I prefer to shop locally. But no more because I have discovered a new
source at Clingo’s Quality Plants in South Fen Road that I cannot recommend too
highly. These are the most excellent beddings plants I have ever bought and,
when compared with the bigger nurseries in the area, certainly the best value.
Where else will you buy three hanging baskets or patio tubs for £10? Go and see
for yourself and the delightful service you get is a bonus.
From the archives: At the police court held at the Town Hall in Bourne on
Tuesday, before Alderman William Wherry and Mr Robert Gardner, a twelve-year-old
girl, Sarah Jane Halford, was summoned for stealing a pair of boots, value four
shillings (20p in today’s money), and James Birch was charged with receiving the
same knowing them to have been stolen. Evidence was given by Susan Rodgers who
missed the boots from her house and identified those produced as her property.
The witness also stated that Halford had been in the habit of coming to her
house to play with the children. Eliza Halford, who was called as a witness,
denied any knowledge of the boots except what had subsequently been told her by
her sister. Police Constable Henfrey said in evidence that he had interviewed
both defendants and although Birch at first denied all knowledge of the offence,
subsequently admitted having taken the boots away and burying them.
He took the constable to a dyke in Meadow Drove and there showed him where the
boots were and handed them over. Both defendants elected to be dealt with
summarily and pleaded guilty. The girl was bound over under the First Offenders
Act to come up for judgment within three months if called for and Birch was
committed to jail for 14 days' hard labour. Eliza Halford was cautioned
respecting the serious consequences of perjury. - news report from the
Stamford Mercury, Friday 7th September 1900.
Thought for the week: It is my firm belief that being required to work
during the month of May is a denial of basic human rights. In May, we should
permit no distractions whatsoever from the tasks of eating asparagus, breathing
the air and listening to birdsong. – Simon Barnes in his Wild Notebook
published in the Times, Saturday 21st May 2005.
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