Bourne Diary - June 2009

Saturday 6^th June 2009

Still in regular use - see "The waste recycling banks . . . "

One of the great cultural occasions for Bourne in recent times was an exhibition of Tudor furniture which was held at the Red Hall over thirty years ago and attracted immense interest throughout the town and county. It was held at the long gallery and brought together a large collection of interesting and valuable items from private owners and museums together with a number of hand-woven silk damasks and brocades.

The subject of the exhibition was chosen because the Red Hall dates from circa 1605 and is typical of those built for prosperous gentlemen of the early Stuart period and most probably designed by John Thorpe (1565-1655), one of the foremost architects in Britain during the time of Elizabeth I. It is one of the town’s oldest surviving secular properties, being Grade II listed in July 1977, and is now used almost solely as offices for Bourne United Charities which administers money left by various people in past times for the benefit of the town.

The display included an Elizabethan court cupboard, a cabinet and two hall chairs, a linen fold and screen, and a Jacobean press. Also gracing the gallery was an Elizabethan tapestry loaned by the Earl of Ancaster while other items came from St James’ Palace, Hampton Court and the Towneley Hall art gallery and museum at Burnley, Lancashire. Other articles were brought in by local people including the copy of a chair now in the Victoria and Albert Museum made by Jack Rayner, woodwork master at Bourne Grammar School, and a collection of Coalport, Derby, Staffordshire and Sunderland pottery and porcelain from the late Tom Jones, the local antiques dealer.

There was also an art exhibition staged by pupils from Bourne Grammar and the Abbey Primary Schools under the direction of art master Rod Hoyle and recent finds from local excavations were brought in by the South Lincolnshire Archaeological unit, pottery made in Bourne during the Middle Ages and old maps of the town and Eastgate areas together with photographs and artefacts of the steam railway age together with other miscellaneous displays by the Women’s Institutes from Bourne and Dyke and the Bourne and District branch of the Workers Education Association.

The exhibition ran for the last two weeks during July 1976 and there was an official catalogue for visitors, price 5p including refreshments, and experts were on hand throughout to answer questions, particularly from schoolchildren who arrived in parties for the daily and weekend sessions. In other words, the exhibition was a tremendous success and did a great deal to stimulate interest not only in the Elizabethan age but also in the Red Hall and Bourne itself.

It was organised by the trustees of Bourne United Charities and was one of a series of events held at the Red Hall which had been saved from demolition after being vacated by the railway company who had used it as a booking office since 1860. When the railway line closed in 1962, there were moves by the local authorities to pull it down but the hall was eventually acquired by Bourne United Charities through the enthusiastic inspiration of Councillor Jack Burchnell (1909-73) who was mainly responsible for saving and restoring it for community use. It was his foremost ambition to see the ancient building returned to a good state of repair, a task that took ten years and was completed in the December before he died when the refurbished property was officially opened in its new role.

He supervised extensive renovation work to the old Tudor building whereby the whole structure was made safe, the roof re-tiled, the chimneys rebuilt and the original mullioned windows renewed and repaired. Internally, the fine staircase was restored, as were other rooms in the long gallery at the top of the house. The two front rooms on the first floor were combined into one, thus affording accommodation for social functions and public gatherings. Other rooms were equipped for various purposes, including a local museum. Thus, on 2nd December 1972, the Red Hall was officially opened as a community centre and in the following years was in constant demand for both public and private functions and many of the town's organisations were able to benefit from the use of its premises.

On the day the exhibition closed in 1976, there was another momentous event when Sir Hereward Wake, the 14th baronet, attended a civic ceremony when the Mayor of Bourne, the late Councillor Ray Cliffe, presented an album to Bourne containing a tribute in photographs and documents to his ancestor, Blanche, Lady Wake, for retention in the new museum which was then being organised at the Red Hall. The gift was to acknowledge the splendid work of the trustees in reclaiming the building and putting it to such good purpose and the Stamford Mercury reported on Friday 6th August 1976: “In the three years since its renovation, the hall has been used for concerts, dances, lectures, a meeting place for local organisations and for general assemblies.”

There have been other successful events in past times, notably an exhibition in 1984 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Arnhem and the part played by Bourne in accommodating soldiers from the Parachute Regiment prior to the conflict and a one-day exhibition in 1996 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the death of Robert Gardner (1850-1926), the Bourne bank manager and talented artist, when 40 of his paintings, including some that had been exhibited at the Royal Academy, were brought together for public view.

But such occasions are now rare. The Red Hall is virtually closed to the public and few people from Bourne have even been inside or seen the museum and although some organisations do hold periodic meetings in one of the rented rooms downstairs, the rest of the building is sealed off while the community events once held there no longer take place. In short, its intended role as a community centre open to all is not now being fulfilled as was originally envisaged by Councillor Burchnell and his fellow trustees who did so much work to save it from being pulled down.

The waste recycling banks that have become a familiar sight in various places around the district may soon be no more. There has been no official announcement to this effect from South Kesteven District Council but they have been singled out for an ominous public consultation exercise which is usually the window dressing to hide the fact that an unpopular decision has already been made at Grantham. The writing has been on the wall for these community amenities for some time after the recycling banks outside the Tesco supermarket in Market Deeping, near Bourne, were closed in December 2007 on the pretext that an assortment of unwanted items had been left there in breach of the regulations and it was forecast then that this was the beginning of the end.

There are several of these green-painted metal containers around Bourne, notably in the supermarket car parks at Sainsburys and Rainbow and on the spare plot of land behind Wake House, and they always seem to be in use and filling up whenever we pass by. But the council says otherwise and the Stamford Mercury reports that a review is now being carried out. Tracy Blackwell, head of healthy environment, told the newspaper (May 29th) that since the kerbside wheelie bin scheme had been introduced, more than 25,000 tonnes of waste has been redirected from landfill to recycling and composting and she added: “This has had a dramatic affect on the amount of waste collected from our recycling banks which are based at village halls, car parks, schools and retail outlets and we think this is the right time to ask residents if this service still offers value for money, considering it costs between £60,000 and £70,000 a year to provide.”

How the average council tax payer is expected to make that judgment is anyone’s guess but they can say whether or not the facility is a useful one and the fact is that these recycling banks are a positive addition to the waste collecting process especially as many large families find the silver bin totally inadequate for the amount generated during the two weeks between collections. If they are to be phased out therefore, as seems to be the most likely eventuality, then it will constitute yet another cut back in our well used public services, the policy now being pursued by many local authorities that has already cost us our weekly kerbside collections which were axed for the first time in more than 100 years when the wheelies were introduced in the autumn of 2006.

The local government elections on Thursday resulted in few surprises and even the expected boycott of the polls did not materialise with a turnout of around 35%. The two Bourne seats on Lincolnshire County which were vigorously contested remain in the hands of the sitting Conservative members but one independent candidate, Helen Powell, already a member of Bourne Town Council, made a valiant attempt and although standing in a different ward, upped her last appearance in the by-election of October 2008 by almost 700 votes, thus ensuring that we will be hearing more of her in the future. The result was:

What the local newspapers are saying: The current debate over the expenses of our M Ps has now widened and there have been calls in many quarters for greater transparency in all sectors of public life. Local government appears to be the next target and a letter to the Stamford Mercury suggests that all councillors should now declare the amounts they have been claiming (June 5th). “In view of the hysteria caused by the details of M Ps’ expenses, it is surely time that those of councillors serving on South Kesteven District Council and Lincolnshire County Council were published”, writes Guy Cudmore of Meadowgate, Bourne. "As a citizen, I expected to find a full set of councillor expense claims quite quickly using the menu on the front pages of these two councils’ web sites. However, although I am reasonably competent at doing research, the information eluded me. Also, these councils have the reputation of over-paying officials. Both need to itemise all the salaries in excess of, say, £50,000, as council tax payers need to know. If there is nothing forthcoming, even in the sktoday or Inside Lincolnshire, then it will be time to make a full Freedom of Information request. If the data was published for M Ps, it should be published for councillors.”

Meanwhile, the scandal involving our M Ps rumbles on and few have escaped the scrutiny of the media investigation into what they have been charging to the public purse. There is deep anger throughout the country over the whole affair and many people feel they have been let down by the very people whom they ought to be able to trust yet the excuses keep coming, of mistakes, lax accounting, oversights, inadvertent miscalculations and an insistence throughout that they were only following the rules and that all claims were entirely legitimate. None have actually held up their hands and admitted guilt.

Yet many members did not take advantage of the system to pocket money for expenses that were clearly outside the spirit of the regulations and the financial aid that was intended and that is at the heart of the matter. There is a fable about a policeman investigating the theft of fruit from a market stall and finding two boys in the park with a discarded apple core at their feet, questioned them as to how it got there to which one replied “I never took it” and the other said “I never ate it”. Both were being truthful but neither was being completely honest, a tale that has a resonance in the current imbroglio.

Thought for the week: Where is there dignity unless there is honesty? – Marcus Tullus Cicero, Roman orator and statesman (106-43 BC).

Saturday 13^th June 2009

We offer our congratulations today to one of Bourne’s tireless voluntary workers, Jim Jones, who has been named by the Queen in her Birthday Honours for services to the community with the award of the MBE. This decoration is well deserved for someone who has devoted the past 30 years for the benefit of the public, in particular the Heritage Centre at Baldock’s Mill in South Street.

Without him, many of the projects would not have come to fruition and in past years he has spent most of his spare time helping to make the centre such a success. It began with the conversion work from mill to museum followed by the establishment of a permanent gallery to the memory of the international racing car driver and designer, Raymond Mays (1899-1980) who was born in this town and which attracts visitors from all parts of the world. He and his wife, Brenda, were also the prime movers of an exhibition to mark Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee in June 2002 and much of the work was carried out by them, including giving the building a spring clean, fresh paint on many of the walls, and new displays.

In May 2002, the couple received the The Local newspaper's Rose Award for their dedication to the Civic Society and to the countless hours they spent in keeping the mill in trim while their major achievement came in 2006 with the opening of the Charles Worth Gallery devoted to the life and work of Charles Worth (1825-95) who was also born here and achieved fame as a Paris fashion designer and founder of haute couture. Jim and Brenda spent several weeks fitting out the gallery and at one point even used their own money to pay some of the bills in order that the project could be brought to a successful conclusion. Not having an actual Worth dress, they visited the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and obtained details of one of Worth’s creations and then recruited a team of ladies who made a replica which is now one of the main attractions of the display. The gallery has since been featured on television several times and in 2007 was honoured by the Lincolnshire Renaissance Awards when it was named as the best new exhibition in the county.

Jim and Brenda were both born in Liverpool but in 1976, when work became scarce, they chose to move to Bourne with their two young children to seek new opportunities. He had trained and worked as a qualified engineer and soon life took on a different aspect, both through employment and particularly through their outside activities. They became founder members of the Civic Society in 1977 and since then Jim has served as a committee member and unpaid custodian of the Heritage Centre since it was opened in 1981 while Brenda is now chairman.

They keep the place clean and are often there at 6 a m polishing and sweeping and are always in attendance for visitors, special groups and school parties who wish to come outside hours. Jim also carries out most of the routine maintenance work and often cleans out the Bourne Eau that runs past the building at the back, while both can often be seen walking the area with black plastic bags picking up wayside litter.

They are also active members of the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust and the Abbey Church in Bourne and fund raisers for the Lincolnshire Old Churches Trust, often participating in their annual cycle ride around the parishes, taking in as many churches as possible between 10 a m and 6 p m on a Saturday in late summer and contributing to the trust's funds through sponsorship. In addition, Jim has trained himself to use a laptop computer, digital camera and projector, to enable him give illustrated talks to clubs and organisations on a variety of heritage and conservation topics whenever required. He also designs the Civic Society and Heritage Centre literature and has produced a set of postcards for sale to aid society funds.

Jim is now retired and has just celebrated his 70th birthday but continues with his voluntary work, always on hand with practical help and advice, a perfect example to all small towns which thrive on enthusiasm and unpaid assistance to keep its various organisations running. His MBE is therefore well deserved and the award is equally bestowed on Brenda, in spirit if not in name, in recognition of their unselfish and dedicated service to the community over the past three decades and to those people and organisations with which they are associated because they are also honoured.

After ten years of neglect, work has begun cleaning up Wherry’s Lane, the main pedestrian route between the town centre in North Street and the Burghley Street car park. In the past few days, workmen have been busy removing the detritus of a decade that has piled up alongside the western end of the pathway that has created a major eyesore.

A sample of the discarded rubbish that has accumulated includes a television set, piping, self-setting shrubs and trees, beer and soft drink cans, takeaway cartons, rotting fast food, plastic bags and an assortment of unmentionable items that should have been removed long ago. As it is, all appeals to clean up this eyesore have been consistently ignored by the local authorities although we ought to be thankful that the problem is now being addressed.

The worst affected area is alongside the old workshops in Burghley Street that have recently been purchased by South Kesteven District Council as part of a £285,000 property acquisition in readiness for the redevelopment of the town centre. When the deal was finalised in April, the leader, Councillor Linda Neal (Bourne West), promised that this difficulty would be addressed. “Until now, the council has been limited in its powers to tidy up”, she said, “but we can now go ahead with the process and clear up this terrible mess.”

There is another equally disturbing problem that has been persisting in Bourne for several years and that is the road surface along Pinfold Lane which has been a hazard for motorists over a similar period. The section towards Manning Road is riddled with deep pot holes that require slow and careful driving to pass without damaging the car yet despite repeated complaints, only superficial maintenance has been carried out and as of this week the surface is as dangerous as it has ever been. It appears that this section of road is unadopted and ownership in doubt yet both staff and customers of Anglia Home Furnishings and users of the public waste facility pass this way as though it were a public road and so someone should be responsible for the urgent repairs that are required.

As with the rubbish in Wherry’s Lane, this problem has been rumbling on for many years and as the waste depot has become one of the busiest places in Bourne since it opened in April 2002, the possibility of mishaps is ever present. The facility is administered by Lincolnshire County Council which is also the highways authority and so it is their responsibility to ensure that those who go there do so safely. If their duties do not legally extend to this section, then perhaps this is the time to tackle this anomaly and formally adopt the road in order that repairs can be carried out to safeguard drivers. It would be no more than an hour's work for a couple of men with a lorry load of tarmac but the effort could save someone from a nasty accident. We have two newly elected county councillors and perhaps this could be a worthy project that would benefit the town they represent and show that they mean business in the future.

The implications of the term high density housing appear to have changed with the years for whereas half a dozen homes to the acre was once the norm, even for council houses, the current practice is to cram in as many as possible. Beech Avenue, for instance, is probably one of our best laid out residential estates of the post-war era yet thirty years ago there were concerns that this too was perhaps becoming too crowded.

The debate over high density housing in Bourne has been intensified with the granting of planning permission for the laundry site in Manning Road where 47 new homes are to be crammed on to a site of under two acres (0.7 hectares) despite protests from the town council and elsewhere and we need to look back to see whether this would have been acceptable in past times.

In June 1975, concern was expressed over a planning application to build 254 new homes on a 30-acre greenfield site as an extension to the Beech Avenue estate and it does not need a mathematical genius to work out the difference between the two schemes yet there were concerns about high density building even then. Houses, bungalows and chalets were included in the plans which suggested eight properties per acre compared with 23 per acre for the Manning Road development today.

Councillor Michael Taylor, later Mayor of Bourne for 1976-77, was particularly scathing in his criticism of the scheme when it came before the town council for discussion. “We have been dissatisfied with similar heavy density building in the past but it has got us nowhere”, he said. The chairman of the planning committee, Councillor Eddie Horn, was also disturbed. “We can do nothing about it”, he said. “These housing estates should not go up ad hoc and we should insist on seeing how many houses there are to be to the acre.”

These criticisms are almost identical to those from the council chamber today and nothing seems to have changed. In the event the project was given planning permission and the estate is now complete for all to see. But we need to ask why this situation has been allowed to develop and worsen over the years whereas the conditions surrounding house building should have improved. Government policy is immediately to blame coupled with a weakening in the authority of the elected councillor who has become emasculated as power has passed to the paid officials. This has enabled developers to gain the upper hand and they now more or less dictate when and where they want to build.

It had been hoped that the economic downturn might reverse the trend but although building at the previous pace has largely been halted, plans continue to appear which indicate that once the recession is over, things will continue more or less as before which does not auger well for Bourne. This is a small Lincolnshire market town that would have benefited from organic growth, that is a gradual rate of house building that kept pace with the provision of amenities and facilities, but the reverse is true which indicates that those who oversee these matters are either ignorant of the implications of forced expansion or are deliberately using the town to dump as many unwanted housing estates on it as possible merely to generate additional revenue from the council tax.

There is another cautionary tale from the 1975 housing development because the Beech Avenue scheme also included provision for a shopping centre and recreational facilities but you will look in vain for either of these amenities today.

Thought for the week: It is an immutable law in business that words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises but only performance is reality. - Harold "Hal" Sydney Geneen (1910-97), English-born American businessman most famous for serving as president of the multi-national conglomerate ITT Corporation.

Saturday 20^th June 2009

New floral feature - see "Bourne is pushing the boat out . . . "

A glowing picture of the water cress industry at Alresford in Hampshire is painted in the travel section of The Times where it is described as “the perfect English town” (April 11th). Generations of locals knew that the clear waters of the River Arle provided ideal growing conditions for the crop which was sold to neighbouring villages but the arrival of the railway in 1865 meant that this year-round salad vegetable could be transported to Waterloo in the afternoon and be on sale at Covent Garden next morning.

So it is today for although the railway closed in 1973 it was opened again in 1985 by a band of volunteers and the Mid-Hants Railway, or the Watercress Line as it is known, now runs for ten miles into the neighbouring town of Alton where it connects with the mainline services. This could have been Bourne because watercress was also an important part of the local economy in past times. The healthy green crop is particularly suited to those places in England where there is an abundant supply of flowing water that was necessary for its production and the natural springs rising at the Wellhead provided the perfect conditions.

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

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

There remains however another major difference between Alresford and Bourne. “A walk alongside the River Arle is essential”, says the newspaper article, “and it is difficult to imagine finding cleaner water this side of an Alpine stream.” Unfortunately the same cannot always be said of the Bourne Eau today although members of the Civic Society have taken matters into their own hands and have been busy in recent weeks cleaning out the waterway in readiness for the forthcoming East Midlands in Bloom competition.

The railway system in Bourne closed down in 1959 after serving the town for almost a hundred years and has been regretted ever since. If the lines had remained open, the benefits to the town can only be imagined, for business and commerce as well as the travelling public who would have had the advantage of connections with the main east coast line between London and Scotland, East Anglia and the Midlands, so enabling the movement of freight and trips out for shopping and the theatre as well as the seaside on sunny days.

Instead, all travel is concentrated on the roads with the car taking precedence, its presence despoiling our town centres and urban streets. The Beeching axe which followed in 1963 was undoubtedly one of the greatest acts of national vandalism perpetrated during the 20th century by reducing the country’s rail network by one third, destroying freight and passenger services that had served the country well for more than a hundred years, making 5,000 miles of track redundant and closing 2,000 traditional railway stations that had become the very essence of rural England.

The passing of the railway age is mourned in many places and, as at Alresford and elsewhere, volunteers fight valiant battles to re-establish what we have lost and so many short stretches of line are being reopened to provide a valuable public service as well as tourist attraction as the old locomotives steam again along routes that we thought had been closed forever. Even today’s train operators are now realising that these relics of the past may still have a use and are calling for the opening of 14 lines and 40 stations as part of a £500 million expansion of the existing rail network.

The proposal is not altruistic, however, and the Association of Train Operating Companies (Atoc) says that such a move could serve more than one million extra passengers and encourage many more to switch from road to rail (BBC Online, June 15th) . “There is a strong case for investment to bring a number of towns back on to the rail network”, said chief executive Michael Roberts. Oh, what a benefit hindsight would have been half a century ago.

Further security precautions to deter intruders that are being taken around the town are an indication that we are fast approaching a Fortress Bourne mentality in our attitude towards the prevention of vandalism and criminal damage. The latest safety measures have been taken by Bourne Town Football Club which is barricading the windows of its clubhouse at the Abbey Lawn after eight of them in the dressing rooms were smashed during a night time incident last month causing damage in excess of £1,600. A single such occurrence might be easier to bear but these premises have been targeted time and time again during the past ten years and the club committee has now decided that enough is enough.

Their spokesman Rob Lambert told The Local newspaper (June 12th) that they were sick and tired of cleaning up after these outbreaks which on the experience of past years were likely to become more frequent during the lighter evenings of the summer months. “They appear to be fuelled by drink because there are always bottles and cans everywhere”, he said. “We are powerless to do anything and the situation is getting worse every year. It is costing us a lot of money to repair the damage while at the same time the club’s insurance premiums are going up because we make so many claims. We have therefore decided to board up the windows for the time being.”

The trustees of Bourne United Charities which administers the Abbey Lawn are currently employing security guards to patrol the grounds although planning permission has now been given for the entire site to be enclosed by 9 ft. high railings which are due to be installed later this year. The design appears to blend with the surroundings but it is nevertheless a metal barrier that will enclose the grounds and may even be accompanied by a night time curfew, thus excluding the public for the first time in two centuries.

The windows of Bourne Cricket Club’s headquarters at the Abbey Lawn are already boarded up and the clubhouse at the bowls club on the other side of the grounds has protective iron bars while barbed wire surrounds the adjoining outdoor swimming pool to deter intruders while there are also other signs around the town of similar security precautions as vandalism continues, notably at shops and business premises, many of which are now protected when closed by iron grilles, high metal gates and padlocks. The Post Office in West Street has been fitted with spiked metal rails along its perimeter wall to stop anyone getting in and Anglian Water has recently installed what looks like razor wire around its pumping station depot in Manning Road. Few public access buildings do not have similar protection while the installation of intruder alarms at domestic properties proliferates.

The erection of the Abbey Lawn fencing has already been described by the town council as “a sad day for Bourne” and with the other defences that can be seen around the town are a gloomy commentary on society today. Popular opinion has been repeatedly in favour of policemen back on the beat, as we had in past times, to combat both vandalism and anti-social behaviour because a uniformed presence is currently a rare sight in Bourne except for a patrol car passing through on the way to somewhere else. The culprits too, when apprehended, are treated too lightly and most people would like to see tougher sentences for those who damage and destroy public property. But all of these criticisms have been made before and nothing is done and so the football club committee and other victims wring their hands in despair and Fortress Bourne becomes more of a reality with each passing day.

Bourne is pushing the boat out in its attempt to win a gold award in this year’s East Midlands in Bloom competition which is due to be judged next month. Everywhere you look there are improvements to the town and no one can fail to be impressed by the work that is underway into making it as attractive as possible for the summer ahead.

The latest feature has just been completed in South Street on a patch of lawn between the Darby and Joan Club and the Bourne Eau which until now has been occupied only by a public seat. The centrepiece is a 14 ft. Enterprise sailing dinghy that has been presented by Tony Everitt who is the quartermaster of the 1st Bourne Scout Group and teaches the lads sailing at the Whitewater Reservoir near Stamford. “The boat is about fifty years old and made of wood and so it is rather past its prime for our purposes”, he explained, “but it is perfect in its new role in a floral display.”

Tony, aged 65, who has been associated with the scout movement for almost half a century, arranged for the craft to be delivered to its new site and organised the soil while Year 7 pupils from the gardening club at the Robert Manning College brought along plants they had grown themselves. Other volunteers from the Bourne in Bloom committee were there to lend a hand while the future maintenance and watering will be undertaken by the Learning Disability Group. This project has not only added a colourful feature to the street scene but has also demonstrated the value of volunteers and groups working together for the good of the community which will also have long term effects because the boat is to remain in situ for the future and will be replanted with seasonal flowers throughout the year.

The East Midlands in Bloom competition is due to be judged during an unannounced visit sometime between Monday 6th and Friday 17th July and Bourne is competing in the section for Category B towns, those with a population of between 6,000 and 12,000, based on the last electoral register. This event has now become an annual effort to make the streets, gardens and open spaces look their best in the hope of impressing the judges when they arrive and of making Bourne an attractive place for visitors and those who live here. We have already been honoured three times in recent years with silver awards in 2006, our first entry for thirty years, and again in 2007, followed by a silver gilt in 2008, and there are high hopes that a coveted gold may eventually come our way, perhaps even this year.

Thought for the week: Flowers are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82), American poet, lecturer and essayist.

Saturday 27^th June 2009

Bourne Castle - see "The existence of . . . "

The possibility of the proposed new medical centre planned for a site on the Southfield Business Park actually materialising appears to recede with each meeting of South Kesteven District Council’s planning committee. The much needed amenity was top of the agenda when the health care scheme was first submitted back in 2006 but it is now taking second place to more housing for the elderly which this town does not need and, more importantly, cannot handle.

It will be remembered that the original scheme by the Leeds-based company One Medical included a centre offering a wide range of services from general practitioner appointments and dentistry to home care for the elderly and mentally ill which would help meet the shortfall in hospital services for the town following the closure of Bourne Hospital in 1998 and create 200 new jobs (Stamford Mercury, 4th August 2006).

In the event, the company submitted two planning applications, one a detailed scheme for a care home and sheltered accommodation and another seeking outline permission for the medical centre which suggested that it was ready to proceed with the first but not quite ready for the second which is exactly what happened. The Local now reports (June 19th) that the flats were completed in October but there is still no firm date when the medical centre is likely to be built. Instead, the company has been given the go-ahead for work to start on another 88-bedroom old people’s home at a cost of £4.5 million which is likely to be finished by next summer, providing 24-hour nursing care for people who are bedridden or need regular medical attention.

These projects may well have a place in the Bourne of the future but at the moment there are other new housing schemes for the elderly around the town that are still not fully occupied while the additional numbers of residents moving in from outside the area are taxing our already overstretched medical facilities. As this column pointed out when the original planning application was submitted three years ago, building the flats before the medical centre is putting the cart before the horse and SKDC should have stipulated a preference as a condition of the planning permission.

Too many of our planning applications are littered with good intentions and the council has still not explained whether the doctor’s surgery promised for Elsea Park across the road is likely to materialise or whether this scheme will now replace it. Those who followed the negotiations at the time will remember that this medical facility was part of the planning gain package agreed with the developers in November 1999 in return for permission to build the 2,000 house estate. A new south west relief road that was also agreed has been opened after much aggravation but the new primary school which was also included has been shelved and there is no sign yet of the promised multi-purpose community hall and sports pitches. It would be shameful if the proposed new medical centre planned for the Southfield Business Park were to suffer the same fate.

The unsightly appearance of wheelie bins littering the streets and gardens of our towns and villages has resulted in a national campaign to allow council tax payers choose whether they should have ordinary dustbins or biodegradable bags instead. The revolt comes amid a growing resentment at the sight of these plastic monsters blighting the urban landscape after local authorities pushed through unwanted changes to the rubbish collection arrangements despite widespread public protest.

Wheelie bins were introduced in Bourne during the autumn of 2006 as part of a £2.7 million recycling initiative by South Kesteven District Council, with two being issued to each of the 55,000 households in its area, silver for recyclable and black for household waste. The new system has been one of the most controversial public service issues of recent years and despite claims that it had been approved through consultation, figures for this exercise have never been released and there have been widespread complaints that the containers are too big and bulky and many homes have no space to store them with the result that they are blocking side passages and even left in front gardens. Terraced houses such as those in the Austerby, Hereward Street, Meadowgate, Elm Street, Burghley Street and St Peter’s Road face particular difficulties and even today, almost three years after their introduction, bins can be seen permanently from the highway at many prominent locations, creating an unsightly appearance in the street scene.

The Daily Mail (June 18th) has now called on our local authorities to stop pushing through unwanted changes to rubbish collection regimes which in Bourne has resulted in the axing of the weekly collections for the first time since they were introduced more than a century ago. Opponents of wheelie bins stress that they are not against recycling but claim that the bins are totally unsuitable for millions of homes yet councils have ignored protests, petitions and even marches and are enforcing the new system through coercion and heavy fines for those who do not comply with the stringent regulations attached to their use.

The introduction of the kerbside wheelie bins is also likely to see an end to yet another public amenity, the waste recycling banks which can be found at 43 locations throughout the South Kesteven district but the council claims that as more is being redirected from landfill to recycling and composting, they have become dispensable whereas anyone who uses them knows that they still provide a valuable service, especially to those households with large families which generate more rubbish than the silver bin can hold.

Bourne is a small market town that has grown up around a traditional market place with four main streets meeting at a central crossroads and most of the properties which pre-date the motor car are small and inaccessible for large vehicles while the restrictions on space leave no provision for receptacles of this size. In addition, the bins are unwieldy and hard for old people to handle yet none of these drawbacks appear to have been addressed by those councils which pushed through the new scheme come what may while turning a deaf ear to the howls of protest.

Perhaps the most scathing comment about their introduction without serious thought on the complications they have created comes from the art historian Sir Roy Strong who told the newspaper: “Hasn’t anyone talked to a designer about these things? They are awful and they are multiplying like rabbits. It is total thoughtlessness.”

The existence of a castle in Bourne in past times remains an elusive prospect although reminders surface occasionally but these are often little more than a joke. A picture postcard, for instance, that arrived this week from Hampshire suggests that one might have existed in the late 19th or early 20th century. The photograph shows a country mansion with battlements and a tower and is clearly captioned Bourne Castle but whether this is an architectural folly from Victorian times or a large house with a plywood façade and other embellishments added for some special occasion is anyone’s guess. Neither is there any indication whether this is, in fact, our Bourne.

It was sent by Neil Beattie of Axford, near Basingstoke, who tells me that he found it in an album of 650 postcards collected between 1905 and 1920 inherited from an elderly friend who died with no family. They had been amassed by his parents, Mr Jessie Coakes and his wife, Verina, who had travelled extensively throughout Britain with Jessie working as a gamekeeper and Verina as a nurse, often in different parts of the country, hence the many postcards. Several feature views of Lincolnshire from 1905 when Jessie was apparently being interviewed for a job, which presumably he did not get. “We have no reason to connect the Bourne Castle view with Lincolnshire other than the existence of your town and these few postcards“, said Neil. “It could equally be anywhere in the country.”

The back of the postcard does not have the name of a publisher, as many do, which would have helped to identify the location and it has not been postally used so there is no telltale postmark either. The huts around the property are also intriguing and if this was a camp of some kind, then we wonder why they are situated so close to the house. I am printing the picture in the hope that someone might he able to shed some light on its location. Unfortunately, it will not add to our knowledge of the real Bourne Castle, if indeed it ever existed a thousand years ago, but at least it may help solve this small mystery that has surfaced in a postcard album from a century ago.

A plaque has finally been installed in the town to the memory of Frederic Manning, the Australian poet and author who wrote one of the finest novels to emerge from the horrors of the Great War of 1914-18.

The location chosen is the front wall of the Burghley Arms where the writer lived for many months in those days when it was known as the Bull Hotel. Although in failing health and latterly surrounded by oxygen cylinders to aid his breathing, Manning penned the draft of his novel The Middle Parts of Fortune which was published first anonymously and then to high acclaim as Her Privates We, a distinguished work that is still in print today.

The circular plaque has cost £400 and has been financed with the support of Bourne Town Council, a tasteful work in blue with gilt lettering, as a reminder to those who pass by the man who laboured within to produce such a fine book.

Manning (1882-1935) served during the war and his novel is a harrowing account of the horrors of trench life seen through the eyes of Private Bourne, the hero he named after this town, and is reckoned to be among the most important literary works to emanate from the conflict of 1914-18 which claimed ten million lives. He lived here in 1929, first at the Bull Inn but later moved in as a lodger with a couple in Burghley Street and during this period, he developed such a fondness for the town that he stayed here until shortly before he died in a London nursing home.

The writer is not universally known and he has been confused with Robert Manning (1264-1340), the mediaeval monk who worked at Bourne Abbey producing religious texts, thus setting a standard of Middle England speech and dialect, and is also well remembered with the Robert Manning College as well as having a road named after him. But Bourne is not blessed with too many connections with the famous and so a plaque for this particular literary association is a welcome addition to the tourist trail that many visitors take when exploring the town.

The plaque has been a long time in coming and bears the date 2007 when it was first discussed by the town council and it was hoped that there would be an official unveiling ceremony on July 22nd that year to coincide with the 125th anniversary of his birth, perhaps with someone from the Australian High Commission in London present, but this has not been possible. Manning was from all accounts a shy and retiring person and so the appearance of his memorial quietly and without fuss and undue ceremony may have met with his approval.

Thought for the week: I awoke one morning and found myself famous. - Lord (George Gordon Noel) Byron (1788-1824), the 6th baron, one of the great English poets and a leading figure in Romanticism who remains widely read and influential throughout the world.

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