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Saturday 1st July 2006
It has become apparent that the bid to move the market
back on to the street is little more than a damp squib. The prime movers have
failed to articulate their case with any conviction, relying instead on
nostalgia and emotion, while the public consultation carried out by The Local
newspaper has produced yawns throughout the town centre with petition forms
lying untouched in shops and in the post office and the clear answer is that
most people are perfectly happy with the way things are.
Gordon Cochran, chairman of the Chamber of Trade, is anxious to redress the
balance and his spirited theory about kerbside stalls being in favour with the
small trader and perhaps the town in general has been added to the web site. But
the town is beginning to realise that the market is perfectly satisfactory where
it is. Time will tell whether this drastic change will come to fruition but in
the final analysis, it seems inevitable that bureaucratic judgement will prevail
and, however rare it may be, in this case it is most likely to be one of common
sense.
The answer lies in the past, as with common law where judgments are made on
precedent, and the evidence on this basis does not support a market move which
is by no means a new idea. Street markets have been held in Bourne for seven
centuries but in years past the pace of town life was quiet and unhurried, a
situation that changed dramatically with the invention of the internal
combustion engine. Today, the motor car rules our lives and its presence in the
streets is marked by white and yellow lines, double and single, traffic lights
and various signs, and a pervading threat, even menace, that you are in the
wrong wherever you park.
Stalls that require a slower and less regulated environment need to be sited
well away from the hurly burly of traffic flows which is why they were taken off
the streets in December 1999 and given their own unhindered space behind the
town hall, a welcome decision by South Kesteven District Council after a most
lengthy, costly and complicated legal procedure. It might have happened earlier
had the old Bourne Urban District Council been more forceful in its endeavours
because in 1965 there was an attempt to shift the market off the streets where
it was causing problems to a site in St Peter’s Road behind the Bourne
Institute, now the Pyramid Club.
The council’s estates committee considered buying the land for this purpose
because of growing disquiet about the existing location in the town centre which
was becoming increasingly dangerous from traffic flows but the move was thwarted
by daunting legalities that will most certainly prevent the present proposal
from materialising.
The devil was in the detail of the market charter, granted by Edward I in 1279,
a legal document signed two years later in 1281 that is now held in the British
Museum. Market rights subsequently passed to the Marquess of Exeter who sold
them to BUDC and they were then acquired by SKDC under the local government
reorganisation of 1974. They decree that stalls cannot be moved without prior
permission from central government which in 1965 was the Ministry of Housing and
Local Government and BUDC decided that this was too complex a bureaucratic path
to follow and so the idea was shelved. Thirty-four years later, as problems with
kerbside trading worsened, SKDC bit the bullet and a safer and more convenient
environment for the market is the result. We should commend this courageous
decision.
Moving the market back on to the street will involve a similar procedure and
also require the approval of both the Department for Environment, Food and Rural
Affairs and the Department of Transport, as well as permission from SKDC which
controls the market rights and Lincolnshire County Council, the highways
authority, which will need to sanction a closure order each Thursday the market
is held in West Street.
But support for this idea is draining away and now the town council has agreed
to put the issue on the back burner. The deputy mayor, Councillor Jayne Pauley,
herself a market stallholder with her husband Bill, has admitted that the move
may not be realistic after all because she is reported as saying: “It seems that
for one reason or another it just will not be practical to move the market to
West Street.” (Stamford Mercury, June 23rd).
Councillor Pauley has however come up with yet another idea, that of holding the
market within the new town centre development when the £25 million scheme is
completed. “The whole focus of the town will change”, she told the newspaper,
“and it would be good all round if the market could be sited in the market
square which has appeared in the plans. It would be excellent for business and
would also enhance the shopping experience in the new town centre.”
Fortunately, those at the cutting edge of local government, the paid officials,
have already sounded a clarion call of caution about moving the market. This is
too much of a commotion over something that is little more than a pipe dream by
the few rather than a serious proposal that will benefit the many. Moving the
market is not a priority. It is not even a problem. There are many things in
this town that need the attention of our councillors without sending them off on
a wild goose chase and wasting time on pursuing such unviable propositions.
Weekly markets, like small shops, are under threat from supermarkets and
councillors can hardly reverse the trend by approving new developments, as
Bourne Town Council did last week when members voted for the Anglia Regional
Co-operative Society’s new store on the industrial site at the corner of
Cherryholt Road and South Road while at the same time supporting local
shopkeepers in their attempts to stimulate business in the town centre. There
seems to be no sense in it and traders in the town must wonder whose side they
are on.
This contrariness affects most of us because we prefer to patronise the big
stores but are reluctant to lose our small shops yet coexistence between the two
is becoming increasingly difficult. Supermarkets are therefore here to stay
because they are so convenient and as this has become the public preference then
the local authorities should recognise this and adapt their policies
accordingly, no matter how difficult a path that is to follow.
The answer is problematic but that it what we elect our councillors for and
perhaps they can look at those areas of the country that have resisted the big
shed developments where the community has benefited accordingly. Trail-blazing
efforts in Suffolk, for instance, to protect small shops against the threat of
superstores, will give hope to the rest of the country.
Lady Caroline Cranbrook has surveyed the food chain in East Suffolk for eight
years and her report was published this week by the Campaign to Protect Rural
England (CPRE). The research reveals that the number of local and regional food
suppliers in the area has risen from 300 to 370 with a wider range of products
being sold although the overall number of shops has stayed constant, bucking the
national trend of decline.
In an earlier report by Lady Cranbrook in 1997, when Tesco wanted to open a new
store near Saxmundham, a survey was carried out at 81 food shops in seven
surrounding market towns and 19 villages to assess the possible impact and a
total of 67 shops thought they would close if Tesco opened. Planning permission
was refused and since then, although 14 shops including five post office stores
closed, the same number have opened.
Lady Cranbrook, a staunch supporter of individual shops selling local produce,
led a high profile delegation to Westminster on Monday where she told MPs that
there is a stark choice facing the country which can either have more
superstores or more local food, shops and jobs linking people with the places
and landscapes where they live. She added: “It is particularly important that we
should try and maintain the network at a time when people want to buy local
food. The situation is urgent with 2,000 small shops nationally closing every
year and unless there is some sort of intervention a tipping point will be
reached. This is when there are not enough small shops to keep wholesalers in
business.”
From the archives - perils of the street market: Messrs Lawson and Son,
glass and china dealers of Boston, sued Henry Schmetzer, a butcher, of West
Street, at Bourne County Court for £1 17s. 3d., being damage to crockery by
defendant’s sheep. The facts, which were not disputed, were that plaintiff was
driving some sheep to his premises and when near the market pitch in West
Street, Bourne, occupied by the plaintiffs, the animals jumped in amongst the
crockery and did damage to the amount claimed. Defendant contended that the
goods were displayed on the highway and that there was no protection provided by
the plaintiff. His Honour, giving judgment for the plaintiff, for the amount
claimed, said that the goods were lawfully on the highway. – news report from
the Stamford Mercury, Friday 26th March 1926.
What the local newspapers are saying: Both of our main weeklies are full
of ands, ifs and buts in their main stories with little real consequence as a
result but then that is so often the stuff of parish pump reporting. The town may get buses
every hour, reports The Local on a possible benefit from a £350,000 cash
injection by Lincolnshire County Council to improve community transport in
Bourne (June 30th) although nothing is likely to happen much before 2009. Bourne
Grammar School could be accepting busloads of Stamford’s most gifted children,
says the Stamford Mercury, but not for another two years and only then if
the scheme to phase out 350 scholarships at Stamford Endowed Schools is agreed
by the county education committee (June 30th).
Then we have the prospect of an east-west by-pass for Bourne within five years,
according to The Local which reports that South Kesteven District Council
has issued a document suggesting using land to the east of Cherryholt Road for
industrial expansion and, if approved, the developers would almost certainly
have to provide a link through to the Spalding Road (June 30th). “This is the
first realistic move towards providing a bypass in the near future,” says the
report. “The road would meet up with the relief road which opened last year
between West Road and the Elsea Park roundabout to form an east-west bypass.”
This would certainly be an asset to the town but as Councillor John Kirkman told
the newspaper, this is merely a consultation procedure to determine how land
should be used in the future. He added: “I estimate that the new link road could
be built in as little as five to ten years.”
Similarly, the Stamford Mercury tells us that there are new concerns over
the future of the bus station in Bourne after seeing the same document from SKDC
identifying the site as being within an area for major housing or commercial
development “at some time in the future” (June 30th) yet most of us are still
full of the old concerns that have not yet been resolved. Nevertheless, there is
suitable outrage as town councillor Mrs Pet Moisey told the newspaper: “The bus
station is a vital transport link for everyone in Bourne and should not be
messed with at all.”
Both of these stories are a reiteration of past hopes and fears, referring to a
consultation document issued by South Kesteven District Council known as the
Local Development Framework (LDF) which is valid until 2021 and to put them in
context we need to read the explanation from council planning official Mark
Harrison who told The Local: “The framework is important because the
sites being identified are those that might be developed in years to come. We
need as many views as possible, whether in favour or against. Local people might
have better suggestions to make.”
You can decide for yourself by reading the consultation document at the
council’s offices in the Town Hall, the SKDC web site or the public library.
The start of the Battle of the Somme is being remembered today, one of
the bloodiest conflicts of the Great War ninety years ago when the British lost
more than 19,000 men on the first day alone. By the end of the campaign in
November there were over 420,000 British and Commonwealth casualties. The
population of this country at that time was 46 million and so the number of men
serving in the forces meant that few families did not have a relative at the
front. Among them was Private Martin Barnes, an infantryman, of Willoughby Road,
Bourne, who had enlisted with the Sherwood Foresters. He was wounded and was
sent to recover at a hospital in France from where he wrote home on Friday 8th
December 1916 to his old headmaster, Mr Joseph Davies, at the primary school in
Abbey Road, about the quiet courage of his comrades:
Every man who has been engaged on the Somme
front has earned a name for himself that ought never to be forgotten. We were
engaged in the fighting at Trones Wood and to lose that wood was one of our
greatest setbacks for it changed hands no fewer than four times before the 21st
Division took it. We were their reserves. It took six hours and a half to drive
the Germans out. The Northamptons and West Kents at last succeeded in driving
them out but not until those battalions had lost nearly all their men. We
relieved them. I am proud to say we even took the enemy trenches in front of us.
But the roll call proved how heavily we had paid for it. Sir Douglas Haig
[Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force 1915-18] congratulated us
on our gallant stand against the big odds and their heavy fire.
Private Barnes came home. Many of his comrades did not.
Thought for the week: Lest we forget - lest we forget!
- Rudyard
Kipling, British writer and poet (1865-1936), from his poem Recessional.
Saturday 8th July 2006
The current malaise afflicting local government is that
we have too much of it and the manifold branches have little idea what the
others are doing yet we are still footing the bill for this inefficiency and
confusion.
A perfect example from this modern Tower of Babel emerged last week when
Lincolnshire County Council announced a community transport initiative that
would provide hourly bus services around the town, so reducing car journeys and
therefore making a contribution towards saving the environment which is the buzz
motivation at the moment, irrespective of whether the grandiose proposals will
ever materialise. At the same time, South Kesteven District Council published
its development plans for the area over the next fifteen years and these
included the possible closure of the bus station in North Street which officers
have repeatedly claimed is underused. It is impossible not to relate one
proposal with the other and we are tempted to ask whether the two authorities
involved have actually consulted with each other on these issues, although we
may assume that they have not.
Much of that which now emanates from the county offices in Lincoln and the
council offices in Grantham is so much hot air, pumped into the public domain
under the pretext of consultation and people participation yet many consider it
little more than job justification by a highly paid staff of officials and
approved by councillors who have become ciphers to their endeavours, unwilling
or perhaps even unable to question ineffectual policy whenever it appears on the
agenda.
The council tax has soared on average by 91% in the past ten years while
services are being drastically pruned and assets sold off as salaries rise and
staffing levels increase. Every area of expenditure is closely scrutinised by
the budgetary wizards toiling away in back rooms for even more spending
economies and soon our councils will resemble those in the old Soviet Union that
became a bureaucracy of Orwellian proportions, existing for their own sakes to
secure employment rather than the provision of services for the public good.
In an ideal democracy, people would remonstrate en masse that enough is enough
and initiate suitable reprisals against what is being done in their name but it
takes courage to join the awkward squad and so membership is small and new
recruits sparse and it is left to a valiant few to take up the cudgels against a
system that is becoming grossly unfair with each year that passes. The result is
that those who do protest in the only way they know how against the conduct of
our local authorities by withholding their council tax soon find
themselves punished severely, like 69-year-old pensioner Josephine Rooney. She
stopped her payments to Derby City Council as a sign of disapproval of the
authority’s refusal to clean up the street outside her home which has become a
haven for drug dealers and was taken to court and jailed, so joining a growing
list of oldies who have an acute awareness of social injustice and were prepared
to challenge their local authorities for what they see as gross incompetence but
found themselves behind bars for their actions.
How many more old folk must be put away before our councils realise that they
have lost the confidence of the people they represent? Unfortunately, they now
have the last word with the bailiffs standing by to collect unpaid council tax
or face the consequences and so the individual has been rendered virtually
powerless while elected councillors, our only link with these authorities,
appear to have been emasculated and as there is little sign that the situation
is likely to change in the foreseeable future, we must pay up and shut up.
What the local newspapers are saying: A series of measures to curb
vandalism at the Abbey Lawn were suggested at a crisis meeting called at the
Corn Exchange in Bourne on Monday evening with closed circuit television high on
the list of priorities. The Local reports that South Kesteven District
Council has offered to supply cameras at a cost of £17,000 and will monitor them
for £2,000 a year while the police promised that their CCTV van would visit the
site intermittently (July 7th).
There was also a suggestion that the ground should be out of bounds to children
during the day after the chairman, Terry Bates, told the meeting: “School
lunchtimes are a nightmare. One boy finished up in hospital after a recent
fight.” The police also condemned the action of some youngsters. “Two teenagers
were caught trying to damage the football ground at 4 am one Saturday”, said
Constable Steve Smith. “Do we know where our children are at that time of the
morning? Do we make enough checks when our child says they are staying at a
friend’s house?” But Adrian Smith of the Len Pick Trust said that the problem
was one of collective responsibility. “We are being reactive by saying that the
problem lies with children”, he said, “when it lies with every one of us.”
There was also encouraging support from head teachers at local schools, the town
council, Bourne United Charities which owns the ground, residents and members of
the various sports clubs which use it together with several organisations who
all gave support to the various suggestions which will be investigated by a
working party to increase security. These include the use of dogs to patrol the
site, the erection of fences to protect club premises, a dusk to dawn curfew,
new bylaws and the introduction of an alcohol free zone.
All of these suggestions will now be considered by the working party but the
crunch will come over the costs because most of the ideas mooted will
involve spending money and it will be interesting to see which of those
organisations that support strict measures to curb vandalism at the Abbey Lawn
will contribute to their implementation.
Six water mills are mentioned in the Bourne entry of the
Domesday Book of 1086 but only one survives and that is Baldock’s Mill at No 21
South Street. It has had many previous names because mills are traditionally
known by the most recent occupant and as the Baldock family were the last to
live there, Baldock’s Mill is the name that survives to this day.
The present mill dates back to 1800 but stopped working around 1924 when the
last water wheel collapsed and was not repaired. The building is now Grade II
listed and owned by Bourne United Charities but has been leased to the Civic
Society since 1981 for use as a Heritage Centre.
Frederick Baldock took over in 1905 but was more occupied
with his timber and carpentry business than milling, having served his
apprenticeship at Keal Cotes, near Spilsby, and after moving to Bourne he
worked primarily in this trade. His workshop was on the land attached to
the mill that now forms part of the Wellhead Gardens. The business was
prosperous, specialising in crates for packaging, gates and fences,
but the workshop was demolished to make way for the Darby and Joan
Hall when it was built in 1959.
He ran the business until retiring in 1930 when his son John, always known
as Jack, took over and so he was the last tenant of the mill and he died
in the summer of 1960, aged 66, although his family stayed on until 1968.
The family of Frederick Baldock (1863-1938) and his wife Annie (née
Hipkin 1869-1938) therefore occupied the mill for more than sixty
years.
There was also a Baldock's Mill in the United States although no
connection between the two has yet been established. In 1741, a convict
called Richard Baldock was sentenced to be deported from England to the
colonies for seven years after being found guilty of stealing a cow but he
married after his release and his son, also called Richard, built
Baldock's Mill in Amherst County, Virginia. This mill continued in
business until 1940 when it was sold and although the building has been
destroyed on two occasions, once by flood and then by fire, it has since
been rebuilt and is now known as Brightwell's Mill.
The substantial
fortune left to this town by the late Len Pick (1909-2004) is already
beginning to benefit many organisations and we are grateful for his
philanthropy. But we should not forget that money has to be earned and
although amassing it in any quantity eludes most of us, those that do must
have qualities we do not possess.
Len was not a highly educated man, preferring hard work to schooling, but
the lessons he learned in life came from experience that soon earned him a
reputation as an astute businessman although much of this awareness came
from his father.
Thomas Pick was a farmer and potato merchant, always on the lookout for
additional land either to buy or to rent for either way it could be turned
into a profit and the idea of branching out into a very successful coal
delivery business came while trying to solve a difficult situation as his
son related in an interview in February 1999 with the late Martin Frisby-Boor,
chairman of the Bourne Family History Society. A transcript was retained
with his papers when he died in 2005 and are now in the custody of the
Civic Society at the Heritage Centre:
Whenever we had land we grew corn on
it for a start and when threshing time came we needed coal for the old
steam engine to work the machines but one day our delivery did not arrive
and Dad went to old Ted Parker in Abbey Road and said: “Can you let me
have a ton of coal for threshing. I’ve been let down with a load.” Old Ted
said: “You get the beggar where you’ve bin getting’ it.” So Dad thought:
“Well, it’s about time you had a bit of competition.”
So he went to see Mr Stennett at the railway station and said: “Harry, I
want some advice. Who sends the most coal to this area?”
Harry said a firm from Chesterfield and Dad said: “Give me their address
and I’ll write to them.”
They wrote back and said that a Mr Jackson was their representative who
attended Spalding market every Tuesday in the vicinity of the White Hart
Hotel, informed Dad of the times he would be there and described the man
and what he wore in his lapel by way of identification. Dad went back to
Harry at the station and said: “Here you are, here’s ten bob. You get down
there for nowt, get yourself a pint or two and order me a truck of coal.”
And that’s how we got started in the coal business and I went into it in
1926 when I was only 16 years old.
The wheelie bin debate: What should I do if the wheelie bin is
full? - Simply display the words Bin Laden Here in your window. This will
ensure that you are visited promptly. What about those who live in a block
of flats? They will be issued with airline-style chutes enabling them have
the bin at the kerbside within 18 seconds. - extract from “Ten
questions about your wheelie bin” published in the latest edition of the
village newsletter at Aslackby, near Bourne.
Message from abroad: Dear Mr. Needle and staff: We think you have created a wonderful Bourne web site. The historical narrations
together with the excellent photography are most delightful to read and
view. You have made the site so interesting as you have brought the
historical together with the present day. You bring focus to
conscientiousness in plans for Bourne's future together with a respect and
value for contributions of the previous generations' toil and
accomplishments. Commendable in today’s fast paced and often too hasty
world! A daughter, son-in-law and two grandsons make Bourne their home
town. - email from Barbara and Ivan George, Salem, South Carolina, USA,
Monday 26th June 2006.
Thought for the week: What is a rebel? A man who says no.
-
Albert Camus, French existentialist novelist, essayist and dramatist
(1913-60). Saturday 15th July 2006
Firemen were called
to Bourne Cricket Club’s pavilion at
the Abbey Lawn early on Monday morning but despite their efforts, damage running
into thousands of pounds was caused to the bar, lounge, kitchen and changing
rooms. There were early suspicions of arson and that vandals who have been
plaguing the sports ground for some time may have struck again but an
investigation revealed that the outbreak was caused by an electrical fault.
Nevertheless, this is a set back for the club at the height of the season and on
the eve of the 40th anniversary of the pavilion’s official opening.
The alarm was raised at 3.45 am by a local resident and three fire crews were soon on the scene but although the building is
still intact, they were unable to save the interior. It is now boarded up and a
portable building has been erected nearby for use as changing rooms by players
for future fixtures until the damage is repaired. All days games have been
cancelled because of difficulties with catering but competition and school
matches at weekends will continue.
Coincidentally, the new pavilion was built as a result of another fire that
wrecked the old building in the summer of 1965, thus causing a tremendous
upheaval for Bourne Cricket Club which has been using the Abbey Lawn since it
was formed in March 1882 when the land was rented from a local farmer for
matches and practice at an annual payment of £5 a year.
The pavilion and changing rooms built in the early years hardly kept pace with
the club’s expansion and in 1965 modernisation plans were afoot but fate took a
hand and speeded up the project. In the early hours of Saturday 17th July, Mr
George Mooney from Middleton, near Manchester, was driving through Bourne with
his family on his way to the east coast for their summer holidays. The route
took him down Abbey Road and as he passed the cricket ground he saw smoke coming
from the pavilion. He stopped and raised the alarm but by the time the brigade
arrived the wooden building was enveloped in flames and nothing could be done to
save it or the contents.
At the height of the blaze, the brigade, under the command of Sub Officer Jack
Mears, used two powerful water jets but there was a constant danger from the
intense heat generated by the fire and many of the asbestos tiles were being
blown some distance with great force, several ending up against the wall of the
outdoor swimming pool 160 yards away.
The building was burned down to the brick foundation walls except for a small
section of the kitchen area which was sheathed in metal. All of the catering
equipment, four new dining tables, crockery for 40 people, three complete sets
of cricket gear, two dozen tubular chairs, several deck chairs and 18 new balls
(themselves worth £50), were lost while outside, a semi-circular area extending
to more than 20 yards at the front of the pavilion was scorched by the heat.
Also lost in the blaze were the club’s records of score books, match reports and
old photographs.
The cause remains unknown but vandalism was not suspected. The building was left
secure after a Hodgkinson Cup semi-final on Friday night between Great Ponton
and Billinghay but the weekend games with Oakham II and Egerton Park were
cancelled owing to the loss of the club’s equipment.
Reg Sones, the club’s vice-chairman, surveyed the devastation. “We feel that
part of Bourne has gone”, he said. “While the amenities were not up to the best
standards for our players, the old pavilion was one of the best in the district
and has seen many famous players in its time. There were plans to upgrade the
facilities but these will now have to be scrapped and we will start again from
scratch and put up a new pavilion.”
The club soon realised that the losses were not entirely covered by their
insurance and within weeks, a Pavilion Appeal Fund was launched to help cover
the cost of rebuilding. A sub-committee was appointed to prepare the scheme for
a new pavilion built of cedar wood with a shingle roof, containing a members
frontage with kitchen quarters, dressing rooms and ablutions and costing around
£5,000. The design was chosen after a similar structure had been inspected and
approved at Stratford-upon-Avon which, it was decided, would blend equally well
with the Abbey Lawn ground.
The club urged all speed for the project to cater for the growing number of
people who enjoyed their weekends watching cricket and taking tea on the ground
and also to retain an important series of arranged fixtures, including the Minor
Counties match which was due to take place there that summer.
A letter asking for financial support was circulated throughout the town and a
separate appeal was made to the club’s playing members which produced a
favourable response. Applications were also made for grant aid to various
organisations and local authorities but the club was deeply aware that it must
retain the public’s loyalty. “It is difficult to design a pattern of development
without a strong basis of local support”, said the letter. “Even without this
loss, had we not had the patronage of many kind people we should probably have
put up the shutters long ago. This situation is no novelty for cricket has
always relied on patronage to maintain a place in the community and the club
will be most grateful to receive any assistance you may be able to give on this
somewhat special occasion.”
Despite being deprived of the building in mid-season, the club continued to
honour its later fixtures and a marquee was erected on the Abbey Lawn as a
changing room while various premises in the vicinity were utilised for the
serving of teas. Plans for the new pavilion were soon drawn up during the summer
months and on November 8th, a tender in the sum of £4,428.37 was accepted from
Messrs Barnsdale & Sons of Donington, near Spalding, for completion within four
months. Progress was on schedule and the new pavilion was opened on 3rd August
1966 by the Earl of Ancaster, the club president, all within a year of the fire,
a remarkable achievement. The money had been found through a grant from the
Department of Education of Science (£1,555), an insurance claim on the old
premises (£1,400) with fund raising and donations from various sources making up
the balance.
The opening of the new pavilion forty years ago this summer was a milestone in
the history of the club that has gone from strength to strength ever since
although the latest disaster will be a major set back and one that will take
several months to put right.
What the local newspapers are saying: Vandalism at the Abbey Lawn
continues to occupy the headlines in all of our local newspapers and Hedley
Stroud, chairman of Bourne Cricket Club, who was interviewed by the Stamford
Mercury in connection with the pavilion fire, revealed that they had already
spent £10,000 on remedial work following various attacks in which damage was
caused to the premises (July 14th). “In the past we have had our windows
smashed, the roof damaged and our aerials destroyed and the situation is getting
worse”, he said. “Perhaps closed circuit television or a safety fence would be
effective but either way something needs to be done quickly.”
Security at the Abbey Lawn is the responsibility of the owners, Bourne United
Charities, but the trustees have remained silent on this issue although one of
them, Councillor Shirley Cliffe, has spoken on the subject in her capacity as a
member of the town council. The Lincolnshire Free Press reports that she
told a meeting of the finance and general purposes committee on Tuesday of last
week that an offer from South Kesteven District Council to install CCTV cameras
at a cost of £17,000 with a £2,000 annual charge had been rejected and she was
disappointed as a result (July 11th). “I thought that this was a good price”,
she added. “That would have covered the entire Abbey Lawn and gone a good way
towards overcoming the problem.”
In fact, CCTV appears to be the perfect solution for a problem that has
persisted at the Abbey Lawn in Bourne for many years, much to the detriment of
the sports clubs which use it that have experienced similar difficulties to that
outlined by Mr Stroud. Perhaps Councillor Cliffe can use her influence in the
board room at the Red Hall when BUC trustees next meet to seek an agreement on
this offer from SKDC, a decision that would receive much public acclaim. It
would also demonstrate that the money they administer is being used as it was
intended, for the benefit of this town, and as the organisation has sufficient
funds at its disposal to meet the costs involved, it only needs a show of hands
by the fifteen trustees to demonstrate that they care not only about their
property assets but also those who are allowed to use them.
The wheelie bin debate: We were in London over the weekend and were
surprised to see wheelie bins everywhere. They have become part of the street
scene but what an unsightly mess they have created. Come September, this is what
we can expect in Bourne.
The capital is full of terraced houses with no rear access and so wheelie bins
are left on the pavement, in tiny front gardens, side porches, in small groups
at the kerbside and any other available space, thus creating widespread
municipal disarray. Residents claim that they are a necessary evil because the
previous system using black plastic bags was unacceptable as they were regularly
ripped open by urban foxes seeking discarded food and scattering the contents in
the process.
Rubbish and its disposal is a particular problem in London which has a
population of eight million people and wheelie bins and other similar
receptacles, often much larger in size, are the current solution and one that is
unlikely to be changed in the foreseeable future. The decision has been taken
for Bourne and the project is now so well advanced as to be irreversible.
Wheelie bins therefore, as with telegraph poles, satellite television dishes,
electricity cables and other unsightly wires, are being added to our street
clutter and we will have to learn to live with them.
Home owners face draconian measures from their local authority if they do
not co-operate with the use of their wheelie bins, according to events in the
West Country this week. In Exeter, 46,000 homes have been issued with one grey
for disposable rubbish and one green for recyclables such as cans, plastic,
cardboard and paper, collected on alternate weeks. On Monday, Donna Challice,
aged 31, a mother of three, became the first person in England to be prosecuted
for putting non-recyclable waste into the green wheelie bin at her home in Hazel
Road, Exeter, on six occasions between November 2005 and February 2006, contrary
to the Environmental Protection Act. Fortunately, sanity ruled and she was
cleared of all charges by magistrates at Cullompton.
But the council was unrepentant and immediately issued a statement warning that
it would not tolerate the wilful “contamination” of green recycling bins.
“Although we are disappointed with the outcome, we are pleased that this case
has raised the profile of recycling and highlighted the importance of doing so”,
said Pete Edwards, Lead Councillor for Environment and Leisure. “We will not
stop encouraging people to recycle and will continue to take action. It takes
only one person to contaminate their green bin and we have to discard a whole
lorry load of recyclables. We cannot let the thoughtless minority spoil it for
the selfless majority.”
Last week, I highlighted the plight of those who felt so strongly about the
inefficiencies of their local authority that they were prepared to go to jail
for withholding their council tax in protest. Now home owners risk a court
appearance for putting the wrong rubbish in their wheelie bins, a system of
refuse collection that has been forced upon us without the benefit of universal
approval and has indeed been the subject of much derision. It is the task of our
councils to provide public services but calling upon the law is now becoming an
accepted method of enforcing unpopular policies and we should view this
development with some disquiet. Councils are supposedly run by our elected
representatives but many will regard this as a gross misuse of the powers they
have been entrusted with on behalf of the people.
Thought for the week (1): I have always looked upon cricket as organised
loafing. - William Temple, Archbishop of Canterbury (1881-1944), in a speech
to parents when headmaster of Repton School.
Thought for the week (2): I tend to believe that cricket is the greatest
thing that God ever created on earth, certainly greater than sex, although sex
isn't too bad either. - Harold Pinter, English dramatist (1930- ), quoted by
The Observer newspaper on 5th October 1980.
Saturday 22nd July 2006
Discoveries of unexploded bombs from the
Second World War of 1939-45 are becoming fewer than in the past although in the
years immediately following the conflict they turned up with alarming
regularity. The majority were small incendiaries, or fire bombs, but many were
huge German aerial bombs, often up to 1,000 lb. each, that had buried themselves
so deeply in the ground that they were never discovered and busy civil defence
teams working at full stretch at the time merely filled in the craters without
making a thorough search.
As a result, they were often unearthed during subsequent building operations
when the site was being developed with the usual precautions ensuing, the area
being cordoned off until the bomb was made safe and then hauled away for a
controlled explosion. It is thought that there are still some below the surface
around the inner cities which took the brunt of the blitz that have not yet been
discovered but are probably in a sufficiently safe place not to incur public
concern.
Explosives and ammunition used by our defence forces have been another problem
because when the Home Guard was stood down in 1945 small caches that had been
hidden were forgotten and although these would be less lethal than the high
explosive monsters dropped by the Luftwaffe, the danger from them is no less
real.
An example of the threat they posed and the havoc they could cause in the
community occurred at Baston, near Bourne, forty years ago. A gang of boys out
searching for firewood on Saturday afternoon, 23rd January 1965, entered a
disused pigsty and found four wooden boxes of Molotov cocktail grenades which
had sufficient power to blow up the entire village. The boys ran home and told
their parents who alerted the police and soon a bomb disposal squad from the
Royal Army Ordnance Corps depot at the Northern Command Ammunition Inspectorate
in York was on its way to the village.
A Molotov cocktail bomb is an improvised device consisting of a bottle filled
usually with petrol or some other explosive material which is ignited and thrown
as a grenade. They were widely used by resistance groups during World War II who
named them after the Soviet foreign minister, Mr Molotov, and the Home Guard was
encouraged to make them for use in the event of an invasion.
A close inspection of this hoard by the experts revealed that there were 92
grenades in all, two of them consisting of phosphorous, benzine and rubber,
packed into bottles with crown tops but the contents of some had begun to
deteriorate and the chemical evaporate and had they not been discovered, the
result could have been devastating for the village as residents were soon to
discover.
There was some alarm at the size and state of the hoard, particularly those
bombs that had started to dry out to the point where they could explode and so
these were placed in buckets of water and, together with the remaining 90, moved
to a safe spot although during the operation, several soldiers sustained
phosphorous burns. The following Wednesday, the deadly cache was split up into
small consignments for transportation and each taken separately to the disused
airfield at Folkingham to be detonated. The soldiers, all of them well
experienced in bomb disposal, said afterwards that it was one of the most
frightening explosions they had witnessed for many years. “It created a huge
fireball in the sky”, said one, “and despite a strong wind, a pall of smoke hung
over the spot for at least fifteen minutes afterwards.”
The pigsty where the bombs were found, 24 in each box together with a number of
explosive charges, was at the rear of No 3 Church Street, a disused stone
cottage owned by Mr John Thurlby of Hall Farm, Baston. During the war it had
been used as a Home Guard post and as a store for explosives but the contents
had been overlooked in the excitement of VE-Day and its aftermath and as the
building was never again in use, they lay there forgotten but growing more
unstable and dangerous with the passing of the years.
A policeman who witnessed the disposal operation, told the Stamford Mercury
afterwards (Friday 29th January 1965): “Had the resulting explosion occurred in
Baston, the whole village would easily have been destroyed, either by the blast
or by the fire and intense heat caused by the phosphorous. The grenades had been
made out of ginger beer bottles and had children tried to open one, thinking it
contained pop, I dread to think what would have happened.”
What the local newspapers are saying: Speculation about the future of the
£27 million rebuilding of the town centre which has been circulating in recent
months was fuelled by a meeting of the Local Forum organised by South Kesteven
District Council at the Corn Exchange on Wednesday when the developers, Henry
Davidson Developments, failed to turn up. The Stamford Mercury reports
that worried shopkeepers reacted angrily, claiming that the uncertainty
generated in recent months was hitting trade and causing a business blight (July
21st). “We all wanted to hear something positive tonight but instead we hear
nothing”, said Mike Dunn, proprietor of Bourne Bookworld in North Street. “We do
not even know why the developers did not turn up.”
Town centre manager Ivan Fuller could not give the meeting a reason why they
were absent and it was left to reporter James Westgate to seek out the company
the following day for an explanation which does not auger well for the future of
the scheme because he was told by associate director, Harvey Lay, that no one
was sent to the meeting because they were still in discussion with the council
and would have had nothing to add. He went on: “The application which had been
expected for October this year is now looking very doubtful. It will be for full
planning permission when it is submitted but I cannot say at this stage when it
will now be forthcoming.”
The developers, Stamford Homes, have resubmitted their application to build 121
new houses on the old railway station site in South Street, currently owned by
Wherry and Sons Limited, but as with the first application which was rejected in
April, it is facing strong opposition from all quarters. The Local
reports (July 21st) that Bourne Town Council rejected the scheme out of hand
during its meeting on Tuesday when the mood of members was summed up by
Councillor Trevor Holmes who said: “We could just about tick every objection on
the list and still have more.”
Ironically, this situation could have been avoided if members of the old Bourne
Urban District Council had possessed more foresight because it had the
opportunity to buy this site for its own purposes, specifically to build a new
public library, forty years ago. The issue was discussed by the council’s
finance committee in February 1965 when the railway installations were being
dismantled after the closure of the line. Officers opened negotiations with
British Rail and the District Valuer for a possible purchase but the idea came
to nought and the land was eventually bought by Wherry and Sons Limited. We
therefore wonder how many golden opportunities are slipping through the fingers
of those councillors who sit on our local authorities today.
The new 1½ mile south west relief road has had a big impact on traffic
congestion in the town centre, according to the Stamford Mercury which
gives details of a traffic count carried out by Lincolnshire County Council
(July 21st). The results show that 3,000 vehicles were diverted during a 12-hour
period and, as the survey reports, that is 3,000 fewer through the town centre,
thus justifying the building of the new £4 million carriageway which opened in
October 2005.
The debate over whether Bourne once had a castle similar to that conjured
up by the public imagination now appears to rest with how the word is defined.
The existence of a substantial building or refuge on the site of the Wellhead
Gardens is beyond dispute but whether it was a castellated and battlemented
fortification such as Neuschwanstein of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame or those we
see in Disneyland remains a matter of conjecture and new evidence reveals that
it may have been merely a façade built to satisfy the vanity of the owner.
An examination of mediaeval records carried out by Kenneth Jacob suggests that
primary documentary sources are the only verification for the existence of such
a structure whereas until now we have depended on unreliable secondary sources,
mainly those of John Moore (1809), William Marrat (1816), Edward Trollope (1861)
and John Swift (1925), all of whom leaned heavily on each other without really
adding anything of note. Then there is the mysterious Peak whose 16th century
manuscript is quoted by all yet we cannot identify him or where this document
can be found. Transcripts of all of these accounts can be found on the CD-ROM A
Portrait of Bourne and are frequently quoted by those who support the castle
theory but they are repetitive and lean heavily upon each other and actually add
little to the debate.
Kenneth Jacob has consulted many early records which specifically refer to a
castle in Bourne but we are left with the doubt as to what sort of a building it
was. Yet he states quite categorically that “A castle is just that”, suggesting
the grand edifice of current conjecture. But is it?
The word comes from the Middle English castel, from the Old English and
from Norman French, both from Latin castellum, diminutive of castrum
and the dictionary definition is as follows:
1 A large fortified building or group of
buildings with thick walls, usually dominating the surrounding country; 2 A
fortified stronghold converted to residential use; 3 A large ornate building
similar to or resembling a fortified stronghold; 4 A place of privacy, security,
or refuge.
As the word castle appears to be so important in
the current context, I asked David Roffe, the distinguished historian and
honorary research fellow at Sheffield University, who has previously contributed
to this web site, for his opinion. He has worked widely in archaeological units,
including the 1985 dig alongside the Abbey Church prior to the building of the
new vicarage, and his research interests include the Danelaw and landscape
history but his main area of study has been the Domesday text.
He tells me that there has been a great change in castle studies in the last ten
years and some experts now see the military aspect of fortification as just one
of a number of functions and not always the most important. In the 12th century,
for instance, its primary role was as a stage set for the lordship,
demonstrating to the world that the lord has arrived while moated manor houses
performed a similar function lower down the social scale. David Roffe agrees
that there was a castle in Bourne because there are many mediaeval references to
it but it should not be implied that it was necessarily seriously defensible.
The important thing was that it could be seen.
We therefore seem to have reached the stage where further discussion is
pointless and any new evidence will lie below ground. The so called geo-physical
survey of the Wellhead Gardens by two lads with their electronic box of tricks
that began in March has, according to the Stamford Mercury (July 14th),
been called off for the time being but even when and if they resume, it is
difficult to believe that that they can solve the mystery by shooting volts from
a battery into the soil.
Anyone familiar with the records will know that there has never been any serious
excavation of the site yet this is the only way that we will discover the truth,
or at least some of it, but in the current climate of indifference by Bourne
United Charities which administers the Wellhead Gardens, I fear that it will not
be giving up its secrets just yet.
Thought for the week: The worth of a state in the long run is the worth
of the individuals composing it. - John Stuart Mill, British philosopher and
social reformer (1806-73).
Saturday 29th July 2006
An important reference to the role of
Bourne Castle has been revealed in a little known directory from the 18th
century that has just come my way. It not only casts doubt on the current theory
that the building was a castellated fortification designed for the protection of
the town but also suggests that the waterway around it may not have been a moat
as is widely believed.
The entry comes from the Universal British Directory for 1793-1798, forerunner
of the widely quoted White’s and Kelly’s directories that were published
periodically throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. The relevant section deals
with the founding of the Abbey Church and then adds:
Very few vestiges of the castle are left; some footsteps are now the only
remains; and these are formed out of some of the old stones laid across a dry
part of the moat; which is yet very fresh, as are the entrenchments round it. We
do not find, in the annals of Britain, that this castle was ever made
serviceable in any of the internal wars of the kingdom; though Bourn was
doubtless, anciently, the residence of men of prowess and valour.
This is particularly significant on two counts. Firstly, these directory entries
were invariably written by someone with a first hand knowledge of the locality,
its history and topography, usually the local schoolmaster, and secondly, it is
ignored by all other accounts of the castle quoted today, notably those written
by John Moore (1809), William Marrat (1816), Edward Trollope (1861) and John
Swift (1925), although the authors would most certainly have known of it but no
doubt excluded it because it did not fit in with their theory, an indefensible
habit of some historians.
Not only does this description coincide with modern thinking on the castles of
the period, that they were often built for show rather than defence, but it also
casts doubt on the existence of a moat which leads to further speculation about
the mounds that surround the site in the Wellhead Gardens. A close inspection
will reveal that they follow the line of the Bourne Eau which stems from St
Peter’s Pool and the more recently cut waterway to the west which encircles the
gardens before joining the main river in South Street. The waterway once powered
three mills, although the Domesday Book of 1086 lists six during earlier times,
and a strong flow would be needed to keep the wheels turning to grind corn at
each one.
This could only be achieved by a smooth running river, the bed unhindered by
obstruction, and so constant clearance of silt and debris would be required and
as the work progressed each year, perhaps even more frequently, with no easy
method of disposing of the spoil, manual labour and horse drawn wagons being the
only method available, it would be piled up on the banks. The second section of
river was cut specifically to power the West Street Mill, demolished in 1910,
and the remains of what could be spoil heaps can clearly be seen along the south
side of its length. Furthermore, if this maintenance were carried out at regular
intervals then the waterway and the adjacent spoil piles would indeed have the
“very fresh” appearance to which the entry refers.
The importance of this flow for the operation of the mills is illustrated by the
history of Notley’s Mill in Victoria Place, demolished in 1973, which records
that on those occasions of poor flow, the miller would send a messenger to
Baldock’s Mill in South Street asking him to raise the regulating lock and allow
more water to pass through in order that his grinding could continue. The
situation could not be sustained and as a result, electricity was used to power
the machinery after the river dried up in 1942.
This latest debate over Bourne Castle is a welcome addition to our knowledge and
it is hoped that those who still adhere to the theory that it was a battlemented
fortification of Windsor and Warwick proportions will take the new intelligence
on board and pause to reconsider what is, perhaps, little more than folklore.
It has become apparent that South Kesteven District Council is desperate
to get rid of its council housing stock at all costs. A perfectly acceptable
system of providing accommodation for the less well off that has operated
satisfactorily for the past 100 years is about to be jettisoned and the
authority is pulling out all of the stops to ensure that the transfer to a
housing association goes through.
A travelling road show arrived in Bourne on Thursday and set up stall in the
market place, “a really big and expensive outfit“, as one observer reported,
with colourful information leaflets being distributed and officials on hand
singing the praises of the new system but underlying it all is a sinister threat
that if tenants do not vote for a transfer then they will be left with a
sub-standard property with few of the benefits that we have come to expect from
the council in the past.
SKDC has 6,300 houses and flats, 535 of them in Bourne, but is proposing to sell
them off at below market prices to the newly created South Lincolnshire Homes
which would then take over the responsibility of bringing them up to the
government’s Decent Homes Standard. The fact that these properties need such
attention is an indication of the way in which the authority has been dragging
its feet and now it proposes to divest itself of all responsibility by selling
out. The final decision will rest with tenants who will be balloted on the issue
but the transaction is already weighted in the council’s favour because it has
indicated that all abstentions will be counted as a vote for transferring to the
association.
Tenants are now being told in no uncertain terms that if they do not agree to
the transfer, then the upgrading of their properties to a higher standard cannot
be guaranteed and other environmental benefits, such as a safer, cleaner
neighbourhood and the introduction of an anti-social behaviour team, all of
which are among the much trumpeted aims of this council, will not materialise.
This has been construed in some quarters as a form of blackmail and has drawn
comparisons with Bath and North East Somerset Council’s knock down sale of its
housing stock to a housing trust which led to the District Auditor ruling that
“inappropriate and unlawful actions on several fronts” had taken place, in
particular the distribution of biased and scaremongering publicity material to
tenants ahead of the transfer vote.
Worried home owners at the Thursday market were obviously concerned when they
put questions to council officials manning the roadshow and one suggested that
the transfer is in fact a done deal. Unfortunately he may be right because the
council has a powerful ally and that is public apathy.
What the local newspapers are saying: The sorry state of St Peter’s Pool
is highlighted by a photo feature in the Stamford Mercury which claims
that even the black swans that have been in residence since 1999 have deserted
their favourite nesting place (July 28th). Several visitors are highly critical
of the rubbish that has been allowed to pile up and one of them, Diane Astley,
aged 27, of Holloway Avenue, Bourne, echoed the opinion of many when she told
the newspaper: “The pool is in an appalling state.”
The responsibility lies with Bourne United Charities which administers the
Wellhead Gardens on behalf of the town and, as on previous occasions, there
appears to be no acceptance of responsibility because one of the trustees,
Councillor Shirley Cliffe, is quoted as saying: “We have looked at ways of
cleaning up the rubbish but have been told by experts that it cannot be done
because the pool bed is on top of the spring and it would be lethal if anyone,
be it an expert or a member of the public, attempted to cross it.”
This is an unconvincing argument and we wonder if this statement was issued with
the authority of Bourne United Charities because it does make the organisation
sound rather ridiculous. We can land a man on the moon, send rockets to Mars,
build a railway across the highest, inhospitable terrain on earth, erect bridges
over the most difficult waterways and cut a canal through the middle of the
Americas yet we are unable to clean up St Peter’s Pool.
This problem appears year after year and the trustees, who are guardians of this
ancient site, continue to sit on their hands. The time has come for them to
grasp the nettle, to understand that the people, in whose interests they work in
the distribution of charitable funds, are very angry about the continued parlous
state of this beauty spot and are now demanding that something be done as a
matter of priority to ensure that it is turned into an attractive and welcoming
place for those who currently visit and is maintained in a decent state for
those who come after.
Those who keep a close eye on their gardens will know that butterflies
are becoming a rarity. There was a time when the trees and bushes would be full
of a wide variety of species but their numbers have slowly declined and their
appearance is far less frequent.
They can be seen, sometimes in large numbers, if you have a buddleia bush or if
the weather is favourable but overall, the ubiquitous presence of yesteryear
when they were all around in large quantities is now merely a memory. The more
popular species such as the large or cabbage white, red admiral, small
tortoiseshell, painted lady, comma and peacock are often in evidence but you
will watch in vain for the holly blue, orange tip, clouded yellow, swallowtail
and purple hairstreak, all of which were common in my boyhood.
Their gradual disappearance has now been acknowledged by Butterfly Conservation
which revealed this week that three-quarters of our species has been lost over
the past 30 years with only 56 now remaining in Britain, the others having
fallen victim to diminishing habitats. Urban sprawl, modern farming techniques,
the loss of woodland, meadows and moors where they breed and a lack of woodland
management have all played their part. Hertfordshire has lost the most species,
a total of 17, with Bedfordshire, Suffolk and Lincolnshire 15 each.
The survey involved 10,000 volunteers in the United Kingdom and the results have
been published to coincide with the first Save our Butterflies Week which is now
underway. Richard Fox of Butterfly Conservation has warned that the countryside
will look very different to future generations. "Unless we actually do something
about the destruction of wildlife habitats in Britain, many species, including
some butterflies, will become rarer or extinct and we will have failed to
preserve our native wildlife heritage for future generations of people to
enjoy," he said. "Changing habitat and global warming will all lead to fewer
species and many of the special, rare ones will go."
The threat to wildlife from chemical sprays is not disputed although the
government refuses to recognise whether the public are also at risk. Anyone who
lives close to farming operations will know the familiar smells of herbicides
and pesticides when the sprayers come round yet implementation of compulsory
five-metre no-spray zones in fields near to houses has been rejected.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has been
considering for some months whether to introduce tighter spray controls
following a controversial report by the Royal Commission on Environmental
Pollution which concluded that it was “plausible” that pesticide exposure could
lead to chronic ill health in bystanders and so the restrictions should be
introduced as a precaution and that farmers should be forced to notify residents
before spraying.
The recommendation however has been thrown out after ministers decided that it
would be wrong to burden farmers with more red tape. Junior DEFRA minister, Jeff
Rooker, came out with this piece of bureaucratic nonsense by way of explanation:
“I firmly believe that the concerns of residents are best addressed at the local
level through dialogue between residents and farmers to identify and understand
the issues and develop mutually agreeable solutions. I also believe that this
can be achieved most rapidly through a voluntary approach that allows for
innovative and flexible solutions.”
The houses on the north eastern side of Stephenson Way, Bourne, look out on to
open farmland where spraying is a regular occurrence and there have been
problems in the past as the older residents will attest. The fields and
therefore the crops come right up to the back garden boundaries and no area is
missed when spraying is carried out, usually three or four times a year and in
each case the operator always wears a protective mask.
To suggest that residents liaise with farmers is a non-starter as has been found
with the use of audio bird scarers although in this case some are sympathetic
and will respond if approached in a responsible manner. But using deadly
chemical sprays within a few feet of houses occupied by old people and children
cannot be justified as the Royal Commission has made clear and there are
sufficient cases on record to prove that they are harmful to wildlife, to garden
plants and to people if they happen to be in the way.
Thought for the week: In the United States there is more space where
nobody is than where anybody is. That is what makes America what it is. -
Gertrude Stein, American writer (1874-1946).
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