Bourne Diary - July 2012

Saturday 7^th July 2012

One of the most controversial aspects of the Olympic torch event through Bourne on Wednesday was the presence of so much advertising. The runners were followed throughout the route by an entourage of gaily coloured vehicles representing this business or that and some critics have suggested that the sight of so many company logos may have devalued the altruistic element of the occasion by relating sport to unfettered commercialism.

The runners were all chosen with care for their contributions to sport, charity and the community and some had inspirational stories to tell which made their places well deserved but whether company vehicles merely carrying an advertising message were justified in tagging along behind is a matter for debate. We all accept that sponsorship is important to sport but perhaps it might be more effective if this were done in a less strident manner.

The current wave of advertising in all spheres certainly seems to have passed its sell by date. The medium is now so over exposed that it has become an intrusive nuisance in our everyday lives and there is increasing evidence that many people try to avoid it at all costs.

Its origins date back to the Egyptians when papyrus was used to make sales messages and wall posters. Other campaign displays have been found in the ruins of Pompeii and ancient Arabia while billboards are known to be the oldest form of advertising. Today, these primitive methods have been overtaken by the mass media which has turned it into a highly sophisticated and ubiquitous multi-billion pound business that has penetrated all areas of modern life, not least the Olympics where high profile companies have gained such a foothold that the games could not continue without them.

The aim of advertising is to communicate with the public, either viewers, listeners or readers, in an attempt to influence or encourage them take a certain course of action, in this case buy or rent a specific product, to drive consumer behaviour towards a commercial offering. We are besieged by its demands wherever we are and whatever we do and in recent years it has made an unwanted intrusion into our homes.

The traditional means of advertising has been the newspapers and poster hoardings, once the main outlets, but there is now a far more extensive range that includes trade magazines and fliers, junk mail, unsolicited telephone calls, radio and television and, the most important development of all, the Internet which has given it a new and more demanding hold on our attention, allowing the sales pitch to take over our computers through blogs, web sites, pop-ups and emails and even by sending text messages to our mobile phones.

Buying is no longer a matter of choice but of persistent persuasion but the public is now beginning to tire of the siren calls of sellers. Those ubiquitous trade magazines and leaflets that arrive regularly through the letter box are being binned unread while more people are registering to have unwanted mail and telephone calls blocked. Favourite films and television programmes are recorded in order that the adverts may be deleted unseen through the fast-forward button and surfers are becoming more astute when asked to accept cookies or provide their personal details from Internet web sites, information that is gathered with the sole intention of creating a profile of your buying habits in order that you may be bombarded with tempting offers in the future.

Major campaigns by our leading companies are known as prestige advertising, that is keeping the product before the public as opposed to the direct selling through the small ads of the local newspaper, and although this costs an enormous amount of money it is difficult to assess whether there is a commensurate benefit.

Even with the current economic crisis when people are having difficulties in paying essential bills, there seems to be no slackening of the hard sell techniques that constantly urge as all to spend more on things we need less. Advertising is regarded by business and commerce as a vital tool in the battle to survive but there comes a time when the customer is not only tired of the constant pressure but is also struggling financially and no matter how clever the campaigns may be, the message is beginning to fall on deaf ears.

We have few problems with itinerant advertising which is usually welcome and informative and consists mainly of posters or banners announcing local events that appear temporarily at various vantage points around the town or, perhaps, those signs of graduated size announcing school or club activities that appear overnight on the grass verges alongside the roads into town. They are mainly unobtrusive and reach a sizeable audience and once the occasion has passed they disappear fairly quickly without any real cause for complaint.

In years past the most popular method for this occasional advertising was bill posting, now illegal because it created an eyesore in public places. No free space escaped the attention of the pasters of posters with fences and blank walls the main attraction, such as the gable ends of houses, empty buildings, bridge parapets and the windows of empty shops, and despite the ubiquitous and admonitory warning notice on many saying “Stick no bills”, all were soon covered with gaudy announcements for forthcoming events, fairs and circuses, sales, auctions and public meetings.

The hey-day of bill posting was during Victorian times, before radio and television, when it became a fast and cheap method of reaching the people with information and so one poster was often pasted on top of another and some of the more popular spots were soon bulging to a depth of several inches. The advent of the cinema brought a fresh wave of gaudy advertisements and by 1930 local authorities in some of the larger cities, including London, were greatly concerned about the ruinous effect they were having on the street scene.

One of the best known bill posters in the county was William Welldon, of North Street, Bourne, who achieved some prominence in his trade during the 19th century. There were several men in the town so employed but Welldon did the job for such a long period that he was reckoned to be the oldest in Britain and earned himself a reputation as the "Father of the Bill Posters", becoming a familiar figure in the district and walking thousands of miles to carry out his work which he continued until he was well over 90 years of age, five years before he died in 1916.

Another colourful character in the bill posting business was Mr Joseph Edward Dallywater who was also the town crier at Bourne as well as being a chimney sweep and landlord of the Red Lion in South Street. He also achieved short fame in September 1899 by entering the lion's cage of a Spanish travelling menagerie that was visiting Bourne, facing the lion and remaining inside with the door locked for several minutes while he calmly smoked a cigarette, after which he emerged unscathed amid the cheers of a crowded audience. He lived to tell the tale and to post more bills but only for a short while because he died prematurely in September 1901, aged only 36.

During the early years of the 20th century, the work was carried out by John Henry Pool who also had a variety of jobs around Bourne and apart from running the market on Thursday and Saturday, he was also handyman for Richard Boaler Gibson, the corn merchant who owned The Croft in North Road, often working by mending grain sacks at the maltings in St Peter’s Road.

His bill posting round was a busy one, with three large hoardings in Bourne, one close to the railway station off South Street, another in Coggles Causeway facing the railway line which ran close by and the third underneath the railway bridge in Abbey Road. He also had a number of sites in the villages around Bourne but despite the long distances involved, he always completed his rounds on push bike with a leather satchel full of bills over his shoulder and a bucket of paste and a brush fixed to the cross bar. The paste was delivered wholesale to his home in Alexandra Terrace, large barrels of the stuff straight from the factory but had to be diluted before it could be used.

John was so dedicated to his work that he could be seen returning home from his bill posting as farm workers were setting out to start their day. The only occasion that he did use motorised transport was at election time when the number of posters increased dramatically and as timing was of the essence, he would hire a car and driver to take him around the many designated sites. He was a busy man all his life and died in 1956 at the age of 70.

Although posters became an art form and are widely admired and collected today, the practice of pasting them on every available public space ended their popularity. They became so widespread that the defacement nuisance could not be ignored and local authorities, beginning with London County Council, started to introduce bylaws prohibiting their use if they disfigured the highway, the urban landscape, street furniture such as railings and lamp posts, historic buildings or places of natural beauty, and this initiative was eventually adopted throughout the country.

Official sites continue to be used to good effect but the placing of unauthorised notices which despoil a neighbourhood, now known as fly posting, carries heavy fines for the culprits and so occasional advertising is confined to approved or private sites, shop windows and official notice boards, and although they sometimes appear illegally on roadside verges, local councils usually turn a blind eye to this practice provided it does not cause a nuisance or generate complaints.

There has been some discussion as to how many people turned out to watch the Olympic torch pass through Bourne on Wednesday after one of our newspapers suggested that the figure was 20,000 (The Local Online), an estimate which I understand was provided by the organisers. There was certainly an excellent turnout with the pavements packed along South Road, South Street, the town centre and Abbey Road, but this figure would seem to be an exaggeration, especially as the population of the town is only 15,000. One contributor to the Bourne Forum tells us that all of the four schools were present and if you add up the numbers on each of the pupil rolls that would take you over 2,000, and so his guesstimate was 10,000 which is a very good crowd for a town of this size.

A thousand years ago, the population of Bourne was barely 500, a settlement that sprang up around the springs that flowed from St Peter's Pool. Since then there has been a slow and steady growth that turned it first into a hamlet, then a village and now a market town that flourishes still. For instance, the population had risen to 1,664 in 1801 and 4,361 in 1901 when the fastest period of expansion in our history began and by 2001 the figure had reached 11,933.

The last census was in 2011 but the complete results are not expected until 2016 although local authorities will probably get some summary data in September. But in view of the increase in house building, particularly at Elsea Park where 750 new homes have already been completed in the past ten years, a figure of 15,000, perhaps slightly higher, would be accurate. The population of Bourne will therefore most likely be nearer 20,000 or even 25,000 within the next decade. This is what is known as progress.

Thought for the week: In the last 200 years, the population of our planet has grown exponentially at a rate of 1.9% per year. If it continued at this rate, with the population doubling every 40 years, by 2600 we would all be standing literally shoulder to shoulder. - Professor Stephen Hawking (1942 -  ), much honoured English theoretical physicist and author.

Saturday 14^th July 2012

There is to be no bandstand for the War Memorial gardens in South Street. The trustees of Bourne United Charities which administers the park on behalf of the town has rejected the idea and as they are a law unto themselves, that appears to be that.

The idea for a Victorian style bandstand to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee was put forward earlier this year by Councillor Helen Powell, now the Mayor of Bourne. This is a private initiative that does not involve the expenditure of any public money and is, in effect, a gift to the town, a project that would have provided an additional feature to be enjoyed when music in the park is played on selected summer days and other similar occasions.

The suggestion was well received with widespread public support and the letters columns of the local newspapers proved this to be so with the liveliest correspondence on any such topic for a decade. In addition, donors have pledged more than half the cost, £12,000, and a great deal of practical help with equipment, construction work, materials and legal assistance and few similar projects have ever been given such an enthusiastic reception. Yet the new chairman of the trustees, Dr Carl Pears, told The Local newspaper (July 6th): "We responded to what we felt the public wanted."

The full statement of refusal from BUC said: "The trustees feel that the provision of a bandstand in the town is a good idea in principle. However, they have expressed their concerns regarding its on-going maintenance and possible misuse. Following further discussions and consideration of letters received from members of the public and residents of Bourne, the trustees have made a unanimous decision that it would not be appropriate to site such a permanent structure in the Memorial Gardens."

Other objections raised by the trustees are that the Memorial Gardens are not an appropriate place to house a permanent structure and that letters had been received expressing concern about a bandstand being located in a park to honour the dead (The Local, July 6th). It therefore appears to have escaped them that band concerts are held there every summer when the musicians actually sit on the memorial steps and paving while the listening crowds gather round it, on the protecting walls, on the grass and among the herbaceous borders.

The other point here is that if the War Memorial Gardens were such an inappropriate place then why not offer a site in the Wellhead Gardens next door which would be equally acceptable but the trustees seem to be so opposed to the idea that no alternative has even been considered.

Dr Pears also told the newspaper that the trustees were concerned about the possible misuse of the bandstand structure as well as its future maintenance and liability. Yet they have blithely offered land in the tranquil surroundings of our historic Abbey Lawn for a skateboard park, an amenity that will cater for a youthful and transient minority and one that has attracted vandalism and anti-social behaviour elsewhere in the country including Stamford, Grantham, Sutton Bridge, Oundle and Peterborough. The proposal has also incurred the wrath and mass objections from the other sporting organisations and a public petition from people living in the vicinity who fear that their lives may be seriously disrupted by the noise and other unwanted distractions yet the trustees insist that they are doing a public service.

The amenities administered by Bourne United Charities have been paid for with money left to this town in the past, notably Thomas Whyment Atkinson (1874-1954) whose legacy enabled the establishment of the Wellhead and War Memorial Gardens in the years following the Second World War of 1939-45. A bandstand in the park would enhance his gift and as he was not only a subaltern in the Volunteer Battalion, the Lincolnshire Regiment, during the Great War but also the first chairman of the Bourne and district branch of the British Legion, he would most surely have approved and it is a pity that the trustees have not thought likewise especially as it will not cost BUC a penny. All that was needed is their goodwill.

There are many people in Bourne who are doing tremendous work for the community and the benefit of the town and without them our voluntary organisations would founder. But there is often despair at the reaction of authority to their efforts which makes them doubt whether what they do is worthwhile. We should remember that those who labour on our behalf giving time, expertise and often money for the benefit of others, do need the encouragement and the support of those in power for without it many excellent ideas and a great deal of good work could be lost and it is a great pity that the trustees have not recognised this.

Undeterred, Councillor Powell intends to continue her fight to bring the project to fruition, even though the bandstand will now need another site. "The trustees just do not understand the project and the benefits of it", she said. "It will be a place where people will congregate together and will enhance the town. We have got to move into the next age and this decision has made me more determined than ever."

One of those valuable community amenities that depend on volunteers is the Butterfield Centre which runs day care for the elderly but cannot survive without the continual help that is freely given and this was amply demonstrated earlier this month when a recent domestic crisis threatened its activities.

The centre has been operating from a large Victorian red brick house in North Road since 1985 but when staff arrived for work on Saturday 30th June they found the day room under several inches of water caused by a leak from a hot water cylinder. They worked all weekend to clear up the mess but the centre was forced to close for two days while repairs were assessed. Much of the damage was covered by insurance but not the antiquated heating system installed over 30 years ago when the building was used as a cottage hospital and the £4,000 needed for urgent repairs was a major financial blow.

But help was at hand and representatives of the Len Pick Trust, our other large philanthropic charity, were quickly on the spot to check out the damage and after agreeing to foot the bill, the centre was soon back in business. Trust manager, Adrian Smith, told The Local newspaper (July 6th): “The centre fulfils a need in the town and the loss of hot water meant that it would be closed to day care patients. We pledged the money because it is important that the centre is only shut for the absolute minimum of time.”

The Butterfield Centre is one of our most important charitable organisations, providing a range of activities and facilities for elderly people including freshly prepared meals and refreshments and other services such as chiropody, domestic cleaning services and meals on wheels and is therefore a lifeline for those living alone.

The Len Pick Trust was formed in 2005 with money left by a local landowner and businessman for the benefit of the people of Bourne and has since made regular grants to many worthy and varied causes while also holding a memorial lecture evening every January. Len Pick, who died in 2004 aged 94, had a particular affection for the Butterfield Centre and several other organisations including the Abbey Church and the Outdoor Swimming Pool and so it was right that the trust in his name should be ready to provide such prompt help.

Litter and rubbish in urban and rural areas have already become so commonplace that councils are trying to increase public awareness by recruiting the support of their local newspapers. There have been various illustrated reports about the problem in recent issues of the Stamford Mercury, with particular reference to the problems in Bourne that were highlighted by this column on April 7th.

One report said that South Kesteven District Council is currently spending £1.1 a year on street cleaning (April 13th) and Councillor John Smith (Bourne West), portfolio holder for a healthy environment, said: “We take our responsibility for this extremely seriously. We do ask people not to drop litter and any areas that are highlighted with us will be inspected and cleaned where necessary.”

This vigilance is obviously insufficient because litter remains a constant problem and it has been left to the town council to ensure that the town is looking its best on special occasions such as the East Midlands in Bloom competition for which judging took place this week, preceded by a litter picking session in which a squad of volunteers turned out to clean up selected areas of the town, thus proving that the district council’s policy does not always match expectations. 

The new restricted opening hours imposed by Lincolnshire County Council at the waste recycling centre in Pinfold Lane are already causing concern because it is likely to motivate the dumping of rubbish in public places but the district council is also guilty in this respect because in 2009 it removed the metal waste recycling banks from various locations around the district such as car parks, village halls, schools and retail outlets on the grounds that they had become redundant following the introduction of wheelie bins even though these are only being emptied once a fortnight. This authority has also recently imposed a £25 levy on the emptying of green bins for garden waste which many old people cannot afford and as the summer advances this is quite likely to exacerbate the problem of fly tipping by the less scrupulous.

By all means, the public should be made aware of the need to keep our streets and public places free of litter and rubbish and not to use roadside verges and farm gate entrances as a dumping ground but at the same time we look to our councils for encouragement by providing convenient and adequate facilities for the disposal of our waste, otherwise undesirable consequences are inevitable.

Much of the street litter is due to the large number of fast food outlets in the town centre and immediate vicinity and customers, especially late at night after the public houses have turned out, appear to have an irresistible urge to drop the wrappings once they have eaten their supper. The result is that the pavements and gutters in the busier areas are often strewn with fish and chip papers, pizza boxes and soft drink cans and bottles together with the inevitable cigarette ends although the detritus in some gutters is of a far more unsavoury nature and streets in the early morning, particularly on Saturdays and Sundays, are often a mess and give a bad impression to visitors who immediately condemn the local authorities for allowing this to happen.

The public is not exempt from blame because there are sufficient receptacles around the town to deposit the detritus of everyday life and litter only appears when people refuse to use them. A recent report from the town council revealed that there are currently 60 such bins in use and all are emptied regularly. They are located at convenient points and easily identified by their black and gold livery and so no one needs to walk more than a few yards without finding one.

It is easy to criticise the local authorities for not doing their job in keeping the streets clean but it should not escape us either that if the people themselves were more diligent in their habits when out and about then the problem would not exist. All that is needed therefore is a stricter personal regime and Bourne's litter problem would disappear overnight.

Thought for the week: Environmental damage such as graffiti, fly-posting and general littering is a menace that is becoming all too prevalent, not just in inner cities but in many communities, urban and rural. - Margaret Beckett (1943-  ), Member of Parliament, first women leader of the Labour Party and one-time Foreign Secretary.

Saturday 21^st July 2012

One of the drawbacks of choosing the Corn Exchange as the new Bourne Community Access Point is the shortage of parking spaces. This has not been addressed by South Kesteven District Council despite a survey by this column earlier this year which revealed that there will be serious difficulties once the new facility opens.

A concentration of services here will mean extra staff, most of them driving to work, although only nine spaces are currently reserved for users of the Corn Exchange. This was pointed out to council officers who attended the presentation of the plans in March when it was admitted that there would be problems but they replied that priority for the available spaces would be given to council staff. It was also hoped that visits by the public would be sufficiently short to avoid congestion but this will be inevitable, especially on Thursdays when the market stalls take over, a weekly event that already guarantees practically every available car parking space in town being taken.

The implications of the location for the new CAP has not escaped the people of Bourne either because a letter to The Local clearly shows that not everyone has been fooled by the propaganda (July 13th). It was written by Peter Page, aged 73, secretary of the Hereward Probus Club for retired professional and business men, who last year raised the issue about the lack of spaces when meetings were held at the Corn Exchange. Around 90 members usually attended, many with mobility problems and therefore needed to park close by but were unable to do so and the two-hour restriction in the nearby Burghley Centre car park was not long enough. “I find it rather annoying to see that in advertising the Corn Exchange as a venue, it claims to have ample free parking”, he wrote in his letter.  “I do not believe that 12 (sic) spaces constitutes ample free parking especially as the rest of the parking can only be used if you are shopping. Future library users be warned.”

Other clubs have also complained including Bourne U3A which meets there every month and although there were some negotiations with South Kesteven District Council, the issue was never satisfactorily resolved. We all therefore know what to expect when the pressure on car parking increases after the CAP opens early next year. Yet a news item has appeared in the latest issue of County News (Summer 2012), the free magazine issued by Lincolnshire County Council, singing the praises of shifting the public library which is being forced to re-locate from South Street where it has eight car parking spaces of its own. “The move will mean longer opening hours, better parking and a newly-refurbished home, making it easier to visit at a time that’s convenient to you”, says the report, thus making it obvious that the writer has not visited the Corn Exchange or examined the implications of the present development.

The Burghley Centre car park is run by Euro Car Parks on behalf of the landlords, Hodgson Elkington of Lincoln, and talks have been held over a system of passes in return for an annual financial contribution towards the maintenance. But who will use them is not yet clear, whether it will be council employees only or whether club members attending meetings and guests attending functions will also be included. Whatever is agreed, it is doubtful if parking spaces will be given up at the expense of shoppers.

This particular issue should have been resolved from the start, but it was not and as the temptation to shift even more services into the building to save money once the CAP is up and running will be overwhelming, there will be more serious problems ahead. Overall, the scheme looks good but appearances can be deceptive and as you cannot get a quart into a pint pot, its success will depend entirely on the available space but if, as many people fear, the new Bourne Community Access Point turns out to be too cramped, then it will fail and the lack of car parking spaces will be a major contributory factor.

Parking in Bourne during the day has been slowly getting worse over the years although the number of available spaces has not been radically increased for at least a decade, a period in which the population has soared as house building continues unabated and vehicle flows increase at an alarming rate.

There are currently 400 car parking spaces around the town, at the Burghley Centre (166), Burghley Street (92), South Street (66), Abbey Road (53), Wake House (20 - private but frequently used), alongside the Pyramid Club in St Peter‘s Road (11), Church Walk (20), plus limited kerbside parking in North Street, West Street, Abbey Road, Burghley Street, Meadowgate and Harrington Street.

There is one advantage in that we do not have to pay to park in Bourne but in the current economic climate it is only a matter of time before charges are introduced. In the meantime, many owners regard the car parks in South Street and Burghley Street as an invitation to all day parking because both are usually full from early morning until late afternoon with cars left by shop and office workers. It is possible to find a vacant space occasionally but the turnover you find in the Burghley Centre where restrictions apply is not evident here, much to the detriment of shoppers and visitors. Another car park will be needed if the town is to survive as a shopping centre but there is no suitable central location unless some of the existing commercial premises adjoining the present car parks are relocated to allow extensions go ahead which is most unlikely.

Suitable sites for a new car park have become available in the past but the last time such opportunities arose they were not even considered. One was North’s Garden Centre in Burghley Street which closed in 1998 when a planning application to build a petrol filling station on the land was submitted but was rejected by South Kesteven District Council and it was eventually used for a new day nursery which is still in business.

More recently, the 1.3 acre site in Manning Road vacated in 2005 by Johnson Brothers (Bourne) Limited, the agricultural engineering company, was the perfect spot for town centre parking because the shops are only a short walk away, but it was bought instead for redevelopment and a three-storey complex of 45 apartments for elderly people has since been built there, a far more appealing prospect for SKDC because of the income from council tax.

There was a misguided attempt in 2005 to provide more spaces with a multi-storey car park, part of the abortive £25 million expansion of the town centre which the council is now at pains to forget but such bureaucratic excursions into the unthinkable should not be allowed to pass without comment. During the ten years of negotiations which must have cost a fortune, it was actually seriously considered building such a monstrosity on the Burghley Centre car park, an acknowledgment that there was a shortage and although this ludicrous scheme was actually supported by some councillors and officials, it was roundly condemned by the public as a potential eyesore and a monstrosity that would be an intrusion for those who lived nearby.

The argument raged for 18 months before SKDC severed connections with the chosen developer for the town centre redevelopment and Bourne breathed a sigh of relief as the dreaded multi-story car park idea was consigned to the dustbin but it was a close shave. Yes, more car parking spaces would be beneficial to the town but certainly not that way.

A contributor to the Bourne Forum has suggested that we need more art in the town before we consider additional car parking but this would appear to be a personal choice rather than a universal need. The intellectual status of the community may be judged by the fact that our only bookshop, a first class quality outlet, is closing down next month while the proliferation of hairdressing and beauty salons, public houses and eateries predominate, demonstrating a preference for coffee and coiffures over culture because most people put the needs of the body before the improvement of the mind.

The type of art is not specified but as we are pointed in the direction of the recently erected 30 foot high stone and bronze Eleanor Cross in the Sheep Market at Stamford, the contributor most probably means some form of standing sculpture for public display, there being no such example in the town at present, and after the recent hostile reception by the trustees of Bourne United Charities to a Victorian style bandstand in the War Memorial Gardens, no likelihood of us ever getting any such artistic adornment as they control most of the available open space for which they appear to favour more modern and intrusive embellishments such as a skateboard park.

Art is a difficult commodity to foist on the public, no matter how beneficial in might be to our well-being, and it is usually the province of the philanthropic who also pay for it. To persuade the people that they need it is another matter because their interests are usually much more individual and even intimate and the very prospect of a work by Henry Moore or Antony Gormley commanding a place in the town centre or perhaps on the Raymond Mays roundabout would be a most difficult task to steer through the maze of local government bureaucracy even if there were sufficient public support and the finance could be found.

The only important free-standing edifice Bourne has ever had is the Ostler drinking fountain, a huge Victorian Gothic monument erected in the town centre by public subscription in 1860 to the memory of a local benefactor but banished fifty years ago to the town’s graveyard in South Road where its architectural merit was finally acknowledged with a Grade II listing in 2007. There is a smaller single stone memorial with a bronze plaque in South Street remembering Raymond Mays and our motor racing connections but that does not have the same aesthetic appeal.

Other manifestations are hard to find although there are one of two paintings by minor artists hanging in the Red Hall whose doors are closed to the public but we do have the occasional exhibitions by amateurs in the Abbey Church and Wake House. Culture has a similarly slender foothold in the town where it is again left to the amateurs to lead the way with occasional dramatic performances at the Corn Exchange and choral and instrumental concerts at the Abbey Church but that is as far as it goes.

There have been two recent suggestions to raise our cultural awareness through the establishment of a centre for the performing arts run by the people, first at The Croft in North Road when it became vacant in 2004 and in need of a future but now sold to a private development company for retired housing, and secondly at the Burghley Street warehouse, also empty for almost a decade and now being developed as part of the Wherry’s Lane project as apartments and yet more shops, all of which will no doubt be occupied by hair stylists, beauticians and the dispensers of coffee. The idea on both occasions was admirable but neither had any chance of coming to fruition, mainly because of the investment required but also because of a dogged determination by our local authorities not to do anything for the public good when they could turn a quick penny.

Our councils appear reluctant to invest in anything that might provide intellectual stimulus which is distinctly lacking in Bourne and will therefore remain an elusive quarry and so the provision of art for the populace slips down the list of priorities to become a most unlikely eventuality in the foreseeable future.

Thought for the week: Art hath an enemy called ignorance. - Ben Jonson (1572-1637), English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor best known for his satirical plays and lyric poems.

Saturday 28^th July 2012

The ambulance station in Bourne has been earmarked for closure, a revelation that will cause alarm in the town because of the possible delays that are likely to result in times of medical emergencies that need hospital attention.

Anyone who has used the service will know that it is fast and efficient, operating as it does from the ambulance station in South Road and therefore within easy reach of the town and surrounding villages. Closure will obviously mean a deterioration in that service no matter what assurances are given because there is no substitute for one that operates locally and therefore in familiar territory.

We currently come under the control of the East Midlands Ambulance Service whose plans published on Wednesday (July 18th) propose the closure of 86 ambulance stations, including those at Bourne, Market Deeping, Stamford and Oakham. They will be replaced by a new system of tactical deployment points, a strategy which it claims will improve performance and response times. This will include the establishment of 13 new  bases for paramedics across the East Midlands, the nearest to Bourne being Sleaford which is almost twenty miles away.

A public consultation will be held in September but that is likely to be little more than window dressing and no matter how the closures are presented and what assurances are given, the service cannot possibly be at the same level that it is at present. This is all part of the cuts forecast by government and now affecting all aspects of our life and if the political pundits are to be believed, worse is yet to come.

The future of the ambulance station has been in the balance for some years, ever since the Bourne Hospital site was sold for housing development nine years ago despite widespread public protest. Attempts by the developers to buy this remaining portion of the land have so far failed and so we retained a service that is both local and immediate even though those who need it are still directed through to a central control board when telephoning for help. The closure of the South Road station is therefore bound to have an effect on that service.

The ambulance service in Bourne began eighty years ago at the Butterfield Hospital and in those early days it was run by the St John Ambulance Brigade after the Bourne division had been set up following a public meeting called in 1931 to recruit support for first aid classes and to man a recently acquired ambulance that had been consigned to the town for use in emergencies.

Forty people volunteered and by March that year, 30 of them had passed their preliminary examinations in first aid procedures and Edgar Judge, the North Street chemist, was appointed ambulance officer. Once qualified through the examination procedure, the men were assigned to ambulance duties when required but these did not always run smoothly.

The first patient to be conveyed in the Bourne ambulance was Mr F North of Mill Drove who was placed on a stretcher which was then loaded into the back and the ambulance set off for the Butterfield Hospital, a short journey to the end of North Street, but as it was crossing the gutter, the vehicle bounced and the back doors swung open. The stretcher started to slide out of the back but one of the attendants managed to stop it before it deposited its patient in the street. Mr North recovered from the indisposition and never held a grudge for the mishap and in 1936, when the brigade marked its fifth anniversary, he gladly accepted an invitation to the celebration dinner and even responded to the toast to "The Visitors".

There were other embarrassing incidents and on one occasion, when the ambulance was called out to collect a man having a fit, the attendants found that a crowd of bystanders were already rendering assistance and everyone present insisted on lending a hand when he was lifted into the vehicle, some even climbing inside to put him on the stretcher. The attendant closed the doors and the ambulance sped off to hospital, taking with it half a dozen of the enthusiastic helpers.

The scope of the brigade widened as members became more proficient and when the ambulance service was eventually taken over by Kesteven County Council, they continued to carry out voluntary work as well as report for duty as attendants when needed. The service was taken over by Lincolnshire County Council during the reorganisation of local government in 1974 and by this time an ambulance station had been established at the corner of Queen's Road and Harrington Street which remained the location until November 1979 when the brick and asbestos building was extensively damaged by a serious fire in which a young mechanic lost his life.

The station was subsequently moved to a corner in the grounds of Bourne Hospital alongside the A15 in South Road where a purpose built four bay building was erected and run by the Lincolnshire Ambulance Service (NHS Trust). The hospital closed in 1998 and the site sold for housing development in the summer of 2003 when the building complex was demolished to make way for new houses. But the ambulance station remained although now run by the East Midlands Ambulance Service (NHS Trust), an amalgamation of several other services and covering a population of 4.8 million people in six counties.

Over 3,200 staff are currently employed at more than 70 locations, including two control rooms at Nottingham and Lincoln, with the largest staff group being accident and emergency personnel while accident and emergency crews respond to over 670,000 emergency calls every year (2011 figures).

Our ambulance service in Bourne has therefore been up and running for more than a century and always with a local station. The proposed centralisation will mean cuts in the service and that does not auger well for the midnight victim of a heart attack or the casualties from a serious weekend or Bank Holiday road accident.

The long-awaited primary school for the Elsea Park estate will become a reality within two years, according to a report in The Local newspaper (July 20th) which will be good news for all those parents who have moved in expecting to have a place for their children in town but finding that they have to travel to outlying villages instead.

The proposed date of September 2014 is still thirteen years after the estate was first announced and the school promised and so the jubilation we are hearing from Lincolnshire County Council is hardly justified, especially as 750 houses have now been built, thus boosting the town’s population by around 2,000 people. Yet Sue Woolley (Bourne Abbey), executive councillor for health, housing and communities, told the newspaper that this was “a big step forward for the town” when the authority has in fact been dragging its heels for more than a decade while our two existing primary schools have been filling up to the point where children are now being turned away.

As recently as last autumn we were told that the new school had been put on the back burner because projected pupil numbers for reception age intakes did not justify the need for 210 extra primary places (The Local, 30th September 2011) but suddenly all has changed, motivated no doubt by the many complaints from parents anxious to find primary places for their children in town with the start of the autumn term this coming September only to find that instead they will face long daily journeys to Edenham, Baston and Thurlby.

They should be thankful that at least the promised school is now going ahead although in view of past experience, a policy of wait and see would be advisable. The new primary is only one of a long list of benefits to be provided by the developer as part of the planning gain agreed with South Kesteven District Council way back in 1999. The others included a south-west relief road to ease traffic congestion through the town centre which eventually opened in October 2005, four months late because of a dispute with the developers, a community hall which finally opened this summer and others that have no signs of appearing at all such as a doctor's surgery.

The relief road and community centre are first class assets to the town and there is no reason to believe that the new primary school will not be of the same standard once delivered. But experience has proved that where planning applications for new housing are concerned we must never expect exactly what has been promised and it would be more realistic to be thankful for whatever we do get and even then it will be a case of better late than never.

Vandals have tried to sabotage the water wheel at Baldock’s Mill in South Street by inserting sticks between the paddles in an attempt to prevent it from turning. They used several branches which they found lying nearby but this was unsuccessful and so they tried with a billiard or snooker cue made of very hard and strengthened wood but even then it snapped in two, one section being swept away while the other lodged in the mechanism and brought it to a halt.

This was a deliberate act of criminal damage to one of the town’s heritage features that has been restored by voluntary effort and one that has become a tourist attraction for the benefit of the town. It was also an extremely dangerous and foolhardy thing to do because the perpetrators could have been badly injured.

The water wheel is fitted over the mill race where water from the Bourne Eau is controlled by a small sluice gate and protected by an iron grill fitted into the outside stone wall. To reach this, the intruders must have climbed the chain fence to gain access from the footpath that runs alongside or entered through the side gate on the other side. Either way they had no business being there and were therefore obviously intent on causing trouble.

Baldock’s Mill was built in 1800 but stopped working around 1924 when the water wheel collapsed and was too costly to repair. Other uses were found for the building which was eventually acquired by Bourne United Charities and in 1983, it was leased to Bourne Civic Society for use as the town’s Heritage Centre. The restoration of the mill wheel has been the biggest project since then, carried out by Jim Jones and Doug Fines who put in more than 500 hours to get it turning, now harnessed to a generator to provide power and so reduce the building’s electricity bills.

The main wheel is 11.5 feet in diameter and fitted with 40 steel paddles which can clearly be seen through the iron grille on the north side of the mill from where the intruders tried to stop it rotating. It is not known exactly when the damage occurred but is believed to have happened over the weekend, possibly late on Friday night. Unfortunately, the mill’s closed circuit television was out of action at that time and as one of the cameras is focussed on the wheel it would have been easy to identify the intruders. The question therefore remains as to who was responsible and to find the answer we do have a clue.

Who would be out and about carrying a billiard cue at that time? Someone perhaps who had been for a game at one of our local clubs and therefore known to a lot of people. Someone, also, who no longer has a billiard cue which is quite a valuable item and who would need to explain to his pals, his wife or his parents why not. This may have been intended as a wheeze or a jolly jape but it was a criminal act and the perpetrators should know the consequences of their actions.

The wheel is now being repaired, a task that will take time as well as money, but it will soon be back in working order thanks to the efforts of the volunteers who run the Heritage Centre. It is doubtful whether the police will investigate or the Civic Society take action if they find out who was responsible. But it would be heartening if those who did cause the damage would come forward and try to make some form of recompense. Such a prospect may be whistling in the wind but now and again small occurrences such as this do help restore our faith in human nature.

Thought for the week: It was remarked to me once that to play billiards well was the sign of an ill-spent youth. – Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent political theorist.

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