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Saturday 7th November 2009
One of the first gifts for the troops
Parcels from home especially at Christmas have always
been a welcome indulgence for the troops because they are evidence that family
and friends back home remember them while on foreign soil and at the same time
provide those small luxuries that may be hard to obtain at the front.
Queen Victoria was among the first to send gifts to her soldiers in South
Africa during the Boer War of 1899-1902 and after becoming concerned about their
morale, decided to lift their spirits by giving each of them a box of chocolate,
then a luxury for the majority of people, as a Christmas and New Year gift.
Forty thousand tins were produced, each carrying a gold-embossed picture of the
Queen’s head with the words “South Africa 1900” and the greeting “I wish you a
happy New Year” inscribed on the front. Many have survived, including one which
was sent to a Bourne man, Charles Stuffins, son of William and Frances Stuffins,
of 24 Woodview, Bourne, and has been preserved by his family.
Charles was serving as a gunner with the Royal Horse Artillery and although the
royal gift arrived late for some of the troops, it is mentioned by him in a
letter from Bloemfontein on 10th April 1900 telling his mother that it was on
its way home to Bourne for safe keeping:
I have sent you the Queen's chocolate box. I
hope you will take care of it for me until I come home. The Queen sent it to us
for a New Year's gift. There was a pound of chocolate in the box. It was very
good of the Queen to send it to us. They are offering £10 for the chocolate
boxes here but none of the men will sell theirs. I hope you will enjoy the
eating of the chocolate and think of me and of the Queen. I hope you get the
chocolate box safely.
Parcels were also sent from Bourne to soldiers at the front
during the Great War of 1914-18 as a result of dramatic film taken during the
Battle of the Somme which was given two public showings by the Bourne Electric
Theatre Company during the first week of December 1916 when the Corn Exchange
was packed on both occasions and additional seating was installed to cope with
the crowds.
The flickering silent images on the screen were probably the first pictures of
the war to be seen in the town, certainly of the mud and blood of the Somme, and
the audience was stunned into total silence and many were moved to tears. The
response was the immediate formation of a fund to buy Christmas parcels for the
Bourne boys, the proceeds of £35 from the two screenings being the first
contribution followed by a flag day in the town which produced a further £14 3s.
7½d. and a house-to-house collection that pushed the figure up to £102 [about
£5,000 at today's values].
Over 200 parcels containing food, sweets and tobacco were eventually dispatched
to local serving soldiers at the front while postal orders of 7s. 6d. each [£14]
were sent to 30 soldiers who were wounded and recovering at hospitals in both
Britain and France because they were not receiving any money while patients.
There were also four Bourne boys who were prisoners of war and 24s. for each was
sent to the Central Relief Committee in London to pay for parcels valued 6s. to
be forwarded to all of them for a period of four weeks. This was the first
indication of how many men and youths from Bourne were serving with the armed
forces, a total of 234 from a population at that time of 4,310 [the 1921 census
figure].
There were similar patriotic efforts during the Second World War of 1939-45 when
parcels were frequently posted to relatives and friends filled with items
reflecting the comforts of home while many voluntary organisations also
contributed and anyone who has had a son or boyfriend serving with the armed
forces at home or abroad will know that the tradition has continued, even during
peace time.
This benevolence and goodwill is still alive in Bourne where Councillor Shirley
Cliffe and her sister-in-law, Mrs Cherry Cliffe, are busy with the latest appeal
to send goodies to our lads in Afghanistan, so following up their successful
efforts of previous years. It began in 2007 when local people rallied to send
parcels to our troops serving in Iraq, an appeal sparked off by Mrs Cherry
Cliffe whose officer son Alan was serving with the Royal Engineers and as a result, fifty
boxes packed with hard-to-come-by items and small luxuries were despatched to
Basra in time for Christmas. “The men have enjoyed and really appreciated the
many surprises sent by your readers, friends and families”, said Major Cliffe.
“Everything was put to good use.”
The good work by Shirley and Cherry continues with donations of items or money
to buy gifts now being collected in readiness for Christmas and filled boxes or
individual items can be donated until the end of November at the offices of The
Local in West Street. This year, the appeal is being combined with another by
Rotary International to provide gifts for deprived children across Eastern
Europe, including Romania, Ukraine and Belarus, and so whatever is donated will
go to worthy causes.
The true horror of the Great War is to be found in the letters home from
the troops and a great deal of what they wrote from the trenches survives. The
most graphic descriptions came from Oliver Davies, a master at Edenham village
school who volunteered for the army after his mother, Mrs Elizabeth Davies, had
offered to take over his teaching duties in order to free him for military
service. By the late autumn of 1915, he had been promoted to lance corporal and
was serving as a signaller with the 2nd Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment, at
the headquarters of the British Expeditionary Force somewhere in France. He
wrote home frequently and always poetically, and one particular letter sent on
Friday 5th November compared his present surroundings with those of his home
town:
If you want to imagine the kind of country
we are in, take a walk down Bourne Fen as far as Twenty. Put heaps more poplar
trees there; blow down nearly all the houses; grow crops of barbed wire instead
of corn; and, above all, don't forget the mud, mud and more mud! There you have
a fairly good idea of what the country is like. The guns are at it pretty
frequently. Some fairly rattle, like gigantic carpet beaters.
On Thursday 11th November, he was again making comparisons with
home when describing a countryside in the grip of war:
The villages look like ghosts of a bygone
age. Houses are without roofs, some have the rafters standing, making them
appear as gaunt skeletons. Of course, the big houses and the churches suffer
most from shell fire. Just picture Abbey Road and the church in that plight. Not
a house with a wall or roof standing intact; a church without a roof or spire;
just traces of walls showing where it once was. Some of the villages round here
must have been very pretty in peace time. They are so prettily studded with
trees. But now there is nothing but rain and mud. The untilled fields, some of
them with unreaped standing crops in them, form another very melancholy setting
in the countryside.
And again on Wednesday 17th November:
We work in one dugout and sleep in another. We are not so far back but that
stray bullets don't reach our way for they do whiz harmlessly over the trench or
dugout. One must be on the alert every minute. It is a case of responsibility
and plenty of it. Viglia et ora or Watch and Pray, the old school motto. This
place is muddier than a Lincolnshire fenland dyke. Now it is past midnight.
Hark! Boom! Bang! again.
Oliver Davies survived the war but many of the Bourne lads did not. On Friday
19th November 1915, Private George Sherwin, son of Mr Luke Sherwin, a
hairdresser, of West Street, Bourne, was serving with the 2nd Lincolnshire
Regiment, somewhere in France:
We are up to our neck in dirt as we are
having so much rain. I was grieved to know that one of Mr Larkinson's sons was
prisoner and one missing. That was in the fierce fighting we had on September
26th. My word! It was just fighting, too, all day long. We took three lines of
the enemy's trenches and the devils got some back again.
Frank Larkinson was posted missing presumed dead on 26th
September 1916 and his brother Percy was captured by the enemy on 17th September
1915, his 18th birthday, and spent the rest of the war at a prisoner of war camp
in Germany. In December, Mr and Mrs Larkinson, of Coggles Causeway, Bourne,
received two letters from their unit, the first from one of their officers,
Lieutenant F Cragg, who wrote:
They were both really good boys and I knew
their work well. With regard to Frank, far be it for me to discourage any hopes
you have that your dear boy may be alive but, as he has been missing for so
long, I doubt very much if he still is. All my men getting cut up so has quite
saddened me but we have the recollection that they died a glorious death,
fighting for their country and its freedom.
The second letter was from Sergeant B Cummins who had heard that
Percy had been taken prisoner:
I am pleased to hear that news has come to
hand of Percy. With regard to Frank, I am sorry I cannot give more news. Of the
two gun teams that went out that night, not one man returned. The night before
Percy went into action, he was talking about his mother and it made us all think
of our homes in England.
The task of writing to bereaved relatives to tell them that
loved ones had been killed was usually the job of the dead man's commanding
officer. But in view of the high number of casualties during the Great War,
particularly during the Battle of the Somme, he delegated this responsibility to
his junior officers and when Private W Lane was killed in action on November
1st, his platoon officer, a young lieutenant, wrote to his next of kin, his
sister Miss Gertie Lane, of West Street, Bourne. Before joining the army,
Private Lane had been employed for 14 years by Mr Alfred Stubley, a painter and
plumber, of West Street, Bourne, and originally joined the South Staffordshire
Regiment, later transferring to the South Lancashire Regiment, and had been at
the front only two months. The subaltern wrote:
It is with much regret that I have to tell
you that your brother has been killed in action. It will perhaps be a great help
for you to know he was killed outright. May I, as his platoon officer, offer to
you my deepest sympathy in your bereavement. He was always willing, and I am
sure he will be a great loss to me and his platoon comrades.
The War Memorial in South Street contains the names of 97 men
who were known to have died during the Great War but it has been suggested that
the figure is nearer 140 and at least 40 are therefore missing. Not every death
was documented and for many months after the Armistice in November 1918, local
newspapers carried many notices from families and friends seeking information
about their loved ones who had been posted missing but in most cases, their
appeals proved fruitless and the search to find and identify them on the
battlefield sites continues to this day.
Thought for the week: If I should die, think only this of me: that
there’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England
- Rupert
Brooke (1887-1915) English poet known for his idealistic war sonnets written
during the First World War, especially The Soldier from which this extract is
taken.
Saturday 14th November 2009
The connection between Lady Godiva and this town is
tenuous to say the least and may depend more on fiction than fact but there is
evidence that she did ride through the streets of Bourne on at least one
occasion.
Milady was an Anglo-Saxon noblewoman who, according to legend, rode naked through
the streets of Coventry almost a thousand years ago in order to gain a remission
of the oppressive taxation imposed by her husband on his tenants. The name
Peeping Tom for a voyeur originates from later versions of this legend in which
a man named Tom bored a hole in his shutters to watch her ride by and was
reputedly struck blind.
The link with Bourne is that Lady Godiva (1040-1080) was the wife of Leofric,
Earl of Mercia, and by tradition the mother of Hereward the Wake who was born at
the castle in Bourne and became a national hero by opposing the Normans who
eventually trapped and slayed him in Bourne Wood, although the tale owes more to
the imagination of Victorian novelists than it does to documentary proof.
Everyone loves an historic anecdote and Hereward’s last days were recalled
during the Bourne Pageant in 1938, one of the great church celebrations of past
times which was held in the garden of the old vicarage [now the Cedars
retirement home] to celebrate the 800th anniversary of the founding of the abbey
by Baldwin Fitzgilbert in 1138. There were several days of events in the church
and on this occasion, a service was held in the open air with a fully robed
choir while special stands were erected around the lawn for the congregation.
Among the re-enactments staged by parishioners was that of monks taking
Hereward’s body by river to Crowland Abbey for burial although it has been
established since that this incident has no historical foundation.
Hereward was also featured on one of the floats during one of those grand
carnival parades through the town which became popular during the years
following the Great War of 1914-18 and our local hero was featured in 1925
during one of the earliest fund raising events for the Butterfield Hospital in
North Road, then a busy medical facility for the town but always in need of cash
to meet running costs. Four years later, in July 1929, the famous ride by Lady
Godiva was staged during the event, now known as rag days that became a very
popular annual occasion. The young lady from the town who played Lady Godiva is
unknown but the event raised the magnificent sum of £64 16s. 3d.
The hospital was a popular charity at that time because few people were not
touched by its activities, either through surgery and out-patient treatment or
home visits by the nurses and street collections such as this ensured its
survival. The Butterfield Hospital closed in 1983, despite a valiant fight by
the town to keep it open, but was given a new lease of life two years later when
it opened in its present role as a day care centre for the elderly.
Money is always needed to keep the new Butterfield Centre running efficiently
and so fund raising continues today but in a less spectacular role with whist
drives, slide shows, concerts and table top sales taking the place of the
carnival parades through the streets which so entertained the populace in past
times.
We have begun a major redesign of the Bourne web site and progress is so
well advanced that the results are already there to see. Many of the pages have
hardly been touched since they were introduced over ten years ago and
improvements on the original were needed to both text and pictures. The task is
painstaking and time-consuming but should be finished by the end of the month.
In the time that has elapsed since we were launched in August 1998 there has
been tremendous progress on the Internet which was not fully accepted at that
time but has now become an integral part of our life. The result is that few
organisations, whether they be councils, schools, sporting clubs, charities and
churches, are without one and with 400 such links listed here, some of our own
entries have become superfluous when we can refer directly to them and so their
pages are being deleted.
The Bourne web site will continue to be a mirror of this town’s history and
heritage but in future we intend to concentrate on providing a new aspect
through pictures and text and with the space that has been freed by the deletion
of extraneous entries, we can include photo features, the first of which
appeared last week detailing the opening of the War Memorial in 1956 and which
is still accessible from the front page. This proved to be an immediate success
and after using our mailing list to remind visitors that it had been posted, we
were gratified to have a total of 359 visitors on Remembrance Sunday alone and
1,815 by the week’s end.
We are using a programme provided by the Photodex Corporation and our teething
troubles earlier this month were sorted out very quickly with an email tutorial
by staff at the company’s headquarters at Austin, Texas, and this prompted them
to take a close look at the web site which impressed them greatly and, as one of
them suggested, to put Bourne on their list of places to visit next time they
came to England.
These photo features will become a regular inclusion in the future and may for
some involve the downloading of a plug-in, a harmless but helpful addition to
your computer which takes only a few seconds to complete, but from then on you
will be able to view them without bother. This is a major development for our
web site and if you enjoy them then please send us a feedback by email because
only then can we know that we are providing information that is of interest and
indeed of value.
Message from home: One of your Canadian readers called your web site "a
masterwork" and I reckon that just about sums it up. It's a joy to travel
through. I came across it via Swayfield which I have noticed several times from
the train while racing up and down the east coast main line and determined to
find out about it - and there it is, included in your amazingly comprehensive
site for Bourne which is way over the other side of the tracks. Like so much of
Britain, the whole area is worthy of investigation and as you are only "up the
road" from us, we'll have to come and have a look. I did not realise that Bourne
has a minster church, as has the old home town here. That alone is worth the
trip. See you then, even if it isn't until the sun comes back. - email from
Norman Hill, Hitchen, Hertfordshire, England, Sunday 8th November 2009.
From the archives: Frederick Rouse was apprehended by the police on a
charge of stealing various articles from the shop and premises of Mr F J Green,
grocer and wine and spirit merchant, of North Street, Bourne, in whose employ he
was up to Saturday night last when he left. In consequence of some
irregularities in Rouse's conduct, Mr Green's suspicions were aroused and the
prisoner's house was searched on Sunday when a quantity of lard and soap,
several bottles of gin and wine and some empty bottles, were found, all of which
were identified by Mr Green as his property. A flitch of bacon was also found in
an outhouse in Mr Green's yard and had apparently been placed there for the
purpose of being removed on a favourable opportunity. The prisoner was
subsequently taken into custody and on Monday, taken before Major William Parker
who remanded him to the petty sessions to be held at Bourne on the 21st inst.
when he was sentenced to three months' imprisonment. - news report from the
Stamford Mercury, Friday 22nd August 1879.
Providing your own food was a necessary part of life in rural England in
past times and many families, especially married farm labourers who lived in
tied cottages, grew their own vegetables and reared a pig in the garden to
ensure that there was something to eat during the winter months. Butcher’s meat
was expensive and usually confined to Sunday lunch, even for those who could
afford it, but a pig was a relatively cheap animal to keep, renowned for eating
anything and therefore fed on kitchen scraps and leftovers from the table.
The ritual of killing the pig in the autumn is now part of our social history,
the stuff of many countryside diaries and reminiscences of boyhood, an occasion
when family and friends turned out for the arrival of the slaughterman and then
helped cut and pack the meat, every part of the animal being used up “except for
the squeak” as tradition had it. Dr John "Alistair" Galletly (1899-1993), who
practised as a family doctor in Bourne for more than 40 years, remembered such
an event in his memoirs when describing a farm worker‘s cottage out in the fen:
Up the back garden path would be a pig sty and after months of raising the
animal came the big occasion of putting away or killing the pig for food. Every
part was utilised. Neighbours would help, even the women, their blouse sleeves
rolled up and wearing a clean pinny [pinafore]. Saucepans, buckets, pitchers,
basins of boiling water were made ready. Pork pies, pig fry, chitlings, trotters
would emerge whilst the carcass itself would be salted down to be hung up
afterwards, along with sides of bacon.
There are many more similar descriptions because this was a big village occasion
and one man who presided over many of them was Jack Lunn (1906-1992) who led a
varied working life and among his occupations was that of pig slaughterer,
having killed his first pig in 1920 at the age of 14, thus continuing an old
country tradition now eradicated by the wind of economic change following the
Second World War of 1939-45 and government regulations which decree that all
animals are killed under controlled conditions in a registered abattoir.
Jack, then aged 83 and living at Woodview, Bourne, remembered his unusual career
during an interview with the Stamford Mercury on Friday 29th December
1989 when he claimed to be the last man in the Bourne area to be called in to
kill the family pig:
I started butchering when I was just
fourteen years old. Then quite by accident I began slaughtering pigs because one
day my boss should have gone but he was ill that he asked me to go instead. When
I got there, the farmer asked ‘What have you come for?’ and when I told him he
said ‘The bloody pig will eat you’ but I soon set about the job and afterwards
he said that he had never seen a pig killed so fast. That started it all and
after that there was no turning back and I soon became very good and it became a
very good earner indeed. Eventually, I was handling some really giant animals
weighing as much as 40 stones but by then I was as strong as an ox and could
despatch them in next to no time. In a good year, I could handle at least 80
pigs.
Jack retired from butchering when he was 65 but continued
killing the odd pig whenever asked until the official slaughterhouses took over.
But despite the nature of his job and having worked with bacon alive and dead
for 70 years, he still enjoyed a few rashers for breakfast. “Really marvellous”,
he told the newspaper with a gleam in his eye.
Thought for the week: Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if
green vegetables smelled as good as bacon. - Doug Larson (1902-81), English
middle-distance runner who won gold medals at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris.
Saturday 21st November 2009
The Croft in better days
It was inevitable that planning permission should be given
for a complex of retirement homes at The Croft in North Road, Bourne. There was
really no alternative for South Kesteven District Council and there will be
sympathy with the 22 people who wrote letters of objection but the decision,
right or wrong, must be accepted as a pragmatic solution to a long-running
problem.
This is an important property but one that has been standing empty and
deteriorating badly during the planning tussle over its future and if this £8
million project did not go ahead then it would be left to moulder even further
to the detriment of the neighbourhood and even the town. There was absolutely no
possibility that the dreams of some for this valuable piece of real estate would
ever come to fruition through its conversion into a hospital, theatre or
community centre because there is neither the money nor the will for such a
venture and even the idea of philanthropy to achieve this is a departure from
reality.
In the years to come, when this retirement village is complete and occupied and
running as is envisaged, public opinion will be different because the social
climate will have changed. The very nature of progress usually augers well for
the better and we can then ponder on what would
have happened to this prime site but for the intervention of private enterprise.
It is a reasonable assumption that the objectors live close by and are incensed
at the thought of their privacy being disturbed by new development and that has
always been the way of things in this age of expansion, thus giving rise to the
new word nimby which was popularised by Nicholas Ridley when he was Secretary of
State for the Environment (1987-89) to mean “not in my backyard” and applying to
those who as a reflex oppose any building development in their neighbourhood. Nimbyism is indeed alive and well in all of us for no one wants any intrusion by
upstart developers and who see it as a right to seek support from all around
them, not least their local authorities, even demanding an expensive public
inquiry to support their standpoint.
Members of the district council’s development control committee met on Tuesday
to approve the scheme by a 12-1 majority and so The Croft will be developed as
proposed and that area of the town will be the better for it. It can only be
hoped that our councillors will be equally determined when it comes to providing
the necessary infrastructure, amenities and facilities to support an influx of
68 elderly singles and couples because it is almost certain that the majority
will come from outside the area.
The heavy rain of recent days is a reminder of the mayhem it can cause and even
bring tragedy to someone who is in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such an
event overtook John Dring, a baker from Toft, near Bourne, who was out on his
rounds with his horse and cart in the autumn of 1880 during a period of
torrential rain. The downpour had already caused severe flooding in many places
and as Mr Dring was returning home in the evening, he was about to pass over the
bridge crossing a tributary of the River Glen which passes through Toft. But the
night was dark and instead of going over the bridge he inadvertently drove by
the side of it and into the river where the horse, cart and driver were carried
away by the violence of the flood.
The horse and cart were recovered the next day but efforts to find the baker’s
body proved unsuccessful until a fortnight later when the corpse was discovered
partially embedded in the sand more than a mile from the bridge where they had
been washed away. An inquest was held at the Butcher's Arms in Toft
(now a private house) on Monday 25th October 1880 before the coroner, Henry
Beaumont, who was told that Dring was a journeyman baker who was 60 years old.
When he left his last customer at Witham-on-the-Hill at seven o'clock on 5th
October, he said: "I am late tonight. It is very dark and cold." She also said
that he was sober.
Dring’s body was eventually found on Saturday morning, October 23rd, 300 yards
below Manthorpe Bridge and about 1½ miles from where he had driven into the
river. The deceased had £18 6s. 2½d. on him, including a £5 note, and a pocket
book. The jury returned a verdict of accidental drowning.
The current debate over M Ps’ expenses has presented a moral dilemma for many
honest people who would not dream of breaking the law yet may have been at fault
through the slightest aberration, often thinking that it was perfectly
acceptable to pursue this or that course of action because everyone else was
doing the same.
There are many examples of this, not least in the executive world of expenses,
claiming car allowance when taking a lift, adding a few pounds on the overnight
hotel bill, putting down a lunch which was social rather than business and so
on. Similar wheezes to inflate the account, usually passed around among
colleagues once they have been known to escape the eye of the accounts manager,
soon become accepted practice and thoughts of wrongdoing recede. Office staff
are similarly tempted by using the company phone for private calls, pocketing a
few pencils and paper clips and using the photocopier or, as in recent years,
surfing the Internet during the lunch break or even during working hours, all of
which is done in company time and with company money.
These small departures of honesty are accepted behaviour in many spheres of
business and commercial life but are all examples of cheating our employers and
may even constitute fraud even though the perpetrators would probably never
agree simply because “everyone else does it”. Yet we readily accept that our M
Ps are in the wrong, perhaps because their crimes have had such a high profile
and we expect those in the public eye to be beyond reproach, but it is doubtful
if many could put hand on heart and say they have never been guilty of even the
smallest deceit for personal gain.
The scandal involving Parliamentary expenses is perhaps merely an indicator of
the level of dishonesty that does exist in our society at all levels but it
takes on more serious connotations when the great and the good are involved
rather than the man in the street. But it also proves that corruption knows no
social barriers and that a touch of the fraudster, whether serious or
inconsequential, perhaps lurks within us all. The dilemma is well illustrated by
one of the most well-known lessons in the Bible which can be found in the gospel
of John (8:7) and is worthy of some thought: “Let him who is without sin cast
the first stone.”
Few would suggest that Bourne’s famous son, Raymond Mays, the international
racing driver and car designer, was not an honest citizen. Indeed, he once
served as a special constable, although it is known that he did not always
observe the law himself, having been prosecuted for speeding on at least two
occasions, but then few drivers even today recognise this infringement as little
more than an acceptable misdemeanour. It will therefore come as some surprise to
learn that he has admitted in some detail to a more serious incident early in
his career involving international currency crime committed in the years before
the Second World War after attending a race meeting in Germany.
Raymond and his team went there in 1935 to participate in the Eifel Rennen on
the Nurburgring circuit, taking with them three 1½ litre works models of the new
ERA car, the first serious competitive event abroad, with director designer
Peter Berthon and a full team of mechanics and support staff. He knew the
reputation of the circuit as the most difficult course in the world, some 14
miles in length with only one straight. The event was also held during the rise
of Nazi supremacy and on the day of the race, attended by 400,000 spectators,
the scene of the start was most impressive. “Storm troopers of the SS lined the
course by the start, bands were playing and the enormous crowd had to be seen to
be believed”, said Raymond afterwards. “The flags of the contending nations were
fluttering in the breeze by the enormous scoreboard and the old Nurburg Castle
towered majestically in the background.”
Seventeen cars from all nations started and Raymond won with a time of 1 hour 38
minutes 33 seconds, an average speed of 69.03 mph and breaking the lap record in
the process. “Crowds surged around the car”, he said. “Press cameras seemed to
be clicking everywhere and all the ERA personnel were frenzied with delight at
our victory. I was almost hoisted from my car by German storm troopers and
escorted to a special grandstand. There our national anthem was played and a
high ranking Nazi official placed a laurel wreath around my neck while the car
was garlanded around the bonnet.”
All of the ERAs had finished in the first four places and the following day,
Raymond and his team paid a visit to the race office to collect their starting
money of £150 for each car plus the prize money, the equivalent of several
hundreds of pounds. “This money meant a great deal to us because apart from the
prestige of our victory, the cash would help to continue to improve the cars and
carry out more experimental work”, he said. “But when we were told that our
prize money should be spent in Germany and not taken back to England, we were
not so thrilled. Arguments took place and finally we collected the money.”
Raymond and his team were still determined to keep the cash and that night, as
the team helped load the four ERA cars and spares into the vans for the road
journey home, they decided to smuggle the hundreds of mark notes back to
England, knowing that it would be a risk as they were breaking the law and
running a real chance of detection because a very thorough search would be made
of all vehicles at the German frontier.
He later described what happened next: “Behind locked doors, by the dim light of
a torch, Peter and the mechanics rolled the notes into round bundles and, with
the aid of a long thin stick, pushed the bundles up the exhaust pipes and
actually into the exhaust manifolds of all three cars. On arrival at the
frontier next day, our hearts missed a beat as the customs officials carried out
a most thorough search, including asking for the sparking plugs to be removed,
but they found nothing and we reached England with our winnings intact.”
Back in Bourne, the marks were exchanged for pounds sterling and so enabled ERA
continue in business and the whole incident is still remembered because the
ribbon from the winner’s wreath presented to him has been preserved and is now
in the Raymond Mays Memorial Room at the Heritage Centre in South Street.
Thought for the week: Honesty is the best policy. If I lose mine honour, I lose
myself. - William Shakespeare (1564-1616), English poet and playwright widely
regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's
pre-eminent dramatist.
Saturday 28th November 2009
New loos for old but not just yet - see "The public toilets .
. . "
The proposed curfew for the Abbey Lawn will begin on December
1st. From then on, the gates will be locked at night, the times varying with the
seasons, thus restricting access to this open space for the first time in more
than two centuries, perhaps even longer.
This is a retrograde step for a progressive society but one forced upon us by
continuing anti-social behaviour, vandalism and even arson that has plagued the
sports organisations which use the grounds for many years, often causing
widespread and costly damage to their premises and equipment. The situation has
therefore prompted Bourne United Charities, which has administered this open
space on behalf of the town for almost 80 years, to increase security by
erecting a nine-foot high metal fence around the perimeter and to prevent access
at night by locking the gates at dusk.
The Abbey Lawn was established on land that originally formed part of the
grounds of Bourne Abbey but the public were allowed to use it at the discretion
of the vicar and there is no record of anyone ever being banned or entry
restricted. The pastureland was eventually acquired by a syndicate of local
businessmen who rented out the rights for cricket and football but when it came
under threat from housing development, Bourne United Charities decided to buy it
for the benefit of the town.
The Charity Commissioners were approached and in January 1931 the purchase was
sanctioned subject to a satisfactory valuation and by May that year, the
transaction was agreed in the sum of £700, to which the cricket club, one of the
main users, made a token donation of £20. The trustees made the purchase with
the intention of preserving it as an open space and sports ground for the town
in perpetuity and since then there has been a continuous programme of
improvement and upkeep for both the sports playing areas and the outdoor
swimming pool which is part of the complex.
The trustees are fully aware of the implications of the curfew because the
chairman, Trevor Hollinshead, told the Stamford Mercury (November 20th):
“This step has only been taken with the greatest reluctance but we have to
ensure the security of the grounds for the benefit of the town. The increasing
number of incidents by a small minority have been well catalogued over the years
and they cannot be allowed to continue.”
It has been suggested that the restrictions will impede a right of way across
the grounds and although it may not be marked on Ordnance Survey maps, or those
kept by the Highways Authority at Lincolnshire County Council, one may have been
established because under Section 31 of the Highways Act 1980, a public right of
way may have been brought into existence through twenty years of continuous use
by the public.
It is also possible for a public right of way to have been created through
lesser periods of more intense use known as common law rights and an historic
public right of way can also be shown to exist through documentary evidence such
as Enclosure documents and old maps. The only way this can be avoided is if the
owner has publicly shown that he does not want a right of way created which is
not the case here but as no one has come forward to dispute the ruling and our
local authorities are not voicing any objection, then it will be enforced from
next Tuesday and will remain so until someone does.*
The public toilets in South Street have been a particular annoyance for several
years, having been built more than half a century ago by the old Bourne Urban
District Council and now wildly outdated. They were in an extremely parlous
state by 1970 and despite money being spent on various improvements, in 1982
(£11,000) and again in 2004 (£4,400), there is now the need for them to be
replaced by a more modern facility.
Our town councillors have recognised this but in doing so appear to have
forgotten an assurance made by South Kesteven District Council to provide a new
and modern lavatory block behind the town hall at a cost of £100,000, a project
put forward as a sop to those who objected to losing the loos at the bus station
in North Street which were pulled down amid howls of protest in April 2007 on
the pretext that they had become a focal point for anti-social behaviour
including vandalism and under-age drinking, but that promise has now been
conveniently forgotten.
SKDC also shut the South Street toilets in 2002 claiming that the walls had been
defaced with offensive graffiti and the cubicles a meeting place for paedophiles
and homosexuals and in answer to the public protests that there was nowhere for
them to spend a penny, suggested that they used the town centre public houses
instead, much to the indignation of the landlords.
The town council eventually came to the rescue by taking over responsibility for
the lavatories which were given a lick of paint and reopened in April 2004 and
the authority has been in charge ever since and is now seeking complete control
in order to rebuild the block at a cost of between £50,000 and £100,000 although
the wisdom of this is questionable. Firstly, it may require a precept on the
council tax to pay for the work which will not be popular with the people,
especially as new lavatories have already been promised by the district council.
The alternative will be to borrow the money but on the first and only time this
has happened before, £40,000 to pay for new Christmas lights in 2001, it took
the council five years to pay off the capital plus an annual interest rate of
5.5%.
Nevertheless, we must respect the decisions of our councillors in these matters
because that is why they are elected and they have decided to proceed with the
project although acquiring control first will undoubtedly involve some lengthy
administrative work. The inevitable working party has been set up and one of the
members is the mayor, Councillor Trevor Holmes, who told the Stamford Mercury
(November 20th): “We will be looking at the possibility of transferring the land
in South Street from the district council to the town council ownership. This
process could take up the two years but this is something that is needed in
Bourne and we are optimistic that it will happen.”
We are tempted to ask how many councillors it takes to change a light bulb (15
on the town council and 58 on the district council) because the popular analogy
is an appropriate one. Why a simple land transaction such as the acquisition of
the South Street lavatories should take so much time can only be understood by
those who work in government and considering the fact that many houses in
Bourne, which are worth a lot more than this piece of property, change hands
regularly within a matter of weeks then the suggested time factor can only be
ascribed to the chronic system of official procrastination that inflates even
the simplest deal to a complex procedure.
The snail’s pace at which our bureaucracy moves continues to irritate and the
leisurely approach favoured by both politicians and civil servants has become a
contagion that has afflicted all levels of government, even down to parish
level. Nothing is deemed to be of sufficient importance to warrant immediate
attention and if it can be left until next month, next year or at some
indeterminate time in the future, then so much the better because this gives
additional time for specially convened working parties and committees to
consider the case and clarify all eventualities. This may be a safe way to
proceed but it is not always propitious and invariably infuriating for those
awaiting a decision.
Private enterprise is inspired by profit rather than the public good and as it
thrives on the premise that time is money, these matters proceed at a much
faster pace. Hardly had planning permission been granted last week for the
scheme to turn The Croft in North Road into an estate of 68 retirement bungalows
than the developers announced their intention to start work next year. It is
therefore quite likely that this £8 million project will be up and running well
before the South Street loos are rebuilt.
Santa's siren call sounds forever nearer and although we dread the onset of this
commercially driven time of year few can deny that warm feeling of friendship
and family which it evokes and the accompanying goodwill and conviviality that
have become part of the occasion. The magi, however, could not have envisaged
what they were starting when they took their gifts to the baby Jesus, thus
beginning a tradition that has survived for 2,000 years and in this age which
seems to be driven by a retail therapy, the giving and receiving of presents has
reached gargantuan proportions.
Those who watch the markets reckon that despite the economic crisis and the
credit crunch, 2009 will be a record year for Christmas shopping which has been
underway for some weeks because there is hardly a store that is not already
decorated with colourful baubles and filled with customers deafened by Jingle
Bells while the pace of sales quickens as Christmas Eve draws nigh. Added to
this, we have the growing phenomenon of online shopping which is also gathering
momentum and on Saturday night, the massive eBay auction and sales web site
crashed under the strain.
There will be even greater demand this weekend, the country’s busiest shopping
day that has also become known as Cyber Sunday, coming earlier than the
traditional Saturday before Christmas because of the time needed for the
delivery of online orders, and the Daily Mail has predicted a milestone
ahead with more than 5.3 millions sales and over 17 million visitors over the
ensuing seven-day period (November 24th). The trend for online shopping is
therefore unstoppable with Christmas Internet sales this year predicted to hit
£8.9 billion, an increase of 24 per cent over 2008 with 38% of the population
doing all of their shopping online and seven out of ten people intending to buy
something in this way.
Online shopping will continue to grow as our High Street shops drown under the
tidal wave of opposition, unable to match the low prices offered by the Internet
outlets and dragged down by rising business rates and rents. The most mournful
prediction came this week when one commentator suggested that within a decade,
the welcoming shops that once played such an essential part in our lives will
have been turned into mere showrooms for the goods bought online, a
frighteningly dismal prospect for those who remember the Christmas shopping of
yesteryear as part of the thrill of the festive season.
Thought for the week: From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not
exist it would be necessary to invent it. - Katharine Whitehorn (born 1928),
British journalist, writer, and columnist known for her wit and humour.
*I am indebted to Countryside Access at
Lincolnshire County Council
for their guidance on public rights of way.
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