Bourne Diary - October 2012

Saturday 6^th October 2012

The end of the masonic lodge - see "A building that  . . . "

It is with some dismay that we learn of the decision by Bourne Town Council to reconsider a past ruling not to become involved with the running of the skateboard park, a controversial project planned for the tranquil surroundings of the Abbey Lawn.

The site is being made available by Bourne United Charities, much to the consternation of other sporting tenants and home owners living in the vicinity, but the trustees want no part of the upkeep, maintenance and insurance costs and so the town council was asked to take on this financial burden but the answer was quite wisely a firm refusal to accept such a liability. Now The Local newspaper reports that councillors are having second thoughts (September 28th).

A motion was tabled by five councillors on Tuesday (September 25th) seeking to reopen discussions on the plans and as a result, a four-member working party has been convened to examine the costs in taking responsibility for the project. Two of the charity’s trustees, the chairman Dr Carl Pears and Trevor Hollinshead, chairman of the estates committee, have been invited to join the group which will liaise closely with the Dimension Park committee, the organisation formed to campaign for a skateboard park in the town.

One of the main supporters of the latest initiative is Councillor Paul Fellows (Bourne West), a new member of the council who joined only last year after being co-opted, and who sees a skateboard park as an important development for the town. “Without the council taking a proactive role, the facility may never be built”, he told the newspaper. “The town council agrees that extra facilities for Bourne are important when it is growing at such a fast rate with new houses being built and more people moving in.”

These are commendable ideals but many are asking whether this is a matter for the town council and why a skateboard park has been singled out for support when so many other good causes are in need of financial help. Furthermore, the new facility could cost as much as £170,000 to build but we have had no indication so far as to where this money will come from.

The town council has an annual budget of only £150,000 (2012-13) and therefore has no cash to spare on such luxuries and to take on the lease, management, maintenance and insurance of a skateboard board park may well be to mortgage its future for many years to come. It should also be remembered that it is only recently that the council refused to spend money on one of the historic properties under its control, the Victorian cemetery chapel, claiming that it could not afford it, preferring to pull the building down rather than pay for restoration, and it was only the speedy action of conservationists that saved it from demolition by successfully applying for a Grade II listing, thus protecting it for the future.

Now the council is considering taking on a skateboard park for a sport which has a minority following and a dubious history in other neighbouring towns where similar projects have attracted criminal damage and have become a magnet for anti-social behaviour, the latest incident being reported at Coningsby where the council-funded skateboard park built at a cost of £55,000 has been wrecked by vandals before it was even officially opened. There is no guarantee that the same will not happen here and if this new initiative is pursued, then the responsibility for this will rest with the town council, a small local authority that is in fact no more than a parish council that should be more concerned with the allotments and hanging baskets in the town centre than running sporting facilities.

This is also a time of economic prudence in public spending with local authorities throughout the country tightening their belts and putting luxury spending such as this on a back burner. For the town council to suddenly commit itself to financing the upkeep of a skateboard park for the enjoyment of a few teenagers would hardly be in keeping with the cost-cutting measures being practised elsewhere.

Councillors have a particular responsibility here and although they are expected to support local initiatives with financial help, they should not plough their own furrow. Running a skateboard park would be hard to justify unless it can be proved that the expenditure would be of benefit to the entire community yet the protests that have been lodged over this particular scheme have on the whole been ignored, not least by Bourne United Charities.

Making difficult decisions in an open and reasoned way is something that parish councils need to do well. Councillors must also remember that they represent the whole electorate on all matters and not just those who support a particular scheme and so the views of those who oppose the skateboard park must be listened to. It is therefore hoped that the working party will see fit to give the objectors as much of its time as those who wish to see this come to fruition and even ask one of them to join in their consultations in order that all shades of opinion are addressed.

One thing is certain. The claim by Councillor Fellows that the expansion of Bourne depends on the establishment of such facilities as a skateboard park is a fallacy. If the demand were there then it would have been up and running many years ago. He may not be aware that such an amenity was first mooted in 1978 and despite several initiatives since, it has not materialised because there has never been sufficient support and the town has doubled in size since then without it. The evidence is that the situation has not altered and if councillors decide to pour money into such a project now then it is only a matter of time before they will have been proved wrong but a large amount of our council tax will have been wasted in the meantime.

A building that was once considered to be the ugliest in Bourne is no more. A demolition team moved in this week to pull down the masonic lodge in Wherry’s Lane and within hours it was reduced to a pile of rubble. The site is to become an arcade of seven shops and fourteen flats as part of the £2.2 million redevelopment of the area and the Hereward Lodge of Freemasons which has occupied the building for over 70 years has moved to new premises in Roman Bank.

Wherry’s Lane has been in need of refurbishment for many years and the opportunity for modernisation came with the failure of the much publicised town centre regeneration scheme in May 2010. Several buildings had already been purchased by South Kesteven District Council for this project, including the masonic lodge (£375,000) and the nearby Burghley Street corn warehouse (£350,000), and having these properties on its hands presented an opportunity for rebuilding a much neglected area of the town. Work began on May and is due to be completed next spring.

The Hereward Lodge was formed in 1868, meeting in the long room at the Angel Hotel, and many of the town’s leading citizens were among its members. But there was soon a hankering to own their own premises and in November 1933, a letter was received from the London Central Meat Company offering a golden opportunity. The company wanted to dispose of a plot in Wherry’s Lane and it seemed a most appropriate place for a purpose built lodge, covering 330 square yards and with a frontage of 66 feet on the public road. The asking price was £33 with the proviso that a new dividing wall of the same height and thickness as the other boundary wall was constructed. The purchase was agreed and a building committee set up to oversee the project.

It was estimated that the total cost would be £1,500 and the long awaited moment arrived on 31st August 1938 when the new premises were consecrated by the Provincial Grand Master for Lincolnshire, Lord Heneage. A total of 100 freemasons crowded the new building to witness the realisation of a long cherished ambition.

The use of the lodge was largely lost during the Second World War of 1939-45 when the ground floor was requisitioned by the army to provide accommodation for troops stationed in the Bourne area and it was subsequently used as an officers’ mess until the end of the conflict. But by 1945, meetings were soon back to schedule and continued so until recent times.

Unfortunately, the lodge building became the target of repeated vandalism and graffiti and the first floor windows facing the lane were bricked up to prevent further expense of replacing broken glass. This gave it a stark appearance resembling a control tower on a remote wartime airfield and so earned it a description as the ugliest building in the town, although this somewhat belied its very pleasant interior.

Then in September 2010, the building was sold to South Kesteven District Council for the current redevelopment.  "Acquisition was inevitable", said lodge secretary, Derek Bontoft, "but this was a more agreeable way of going through the process rather than compulsory purchase." By September 2011, the lodge had moved out and so heralded the end of a busy chapter in its history.

The metamorphosis of a five-bedroom residence into the Manor House of Bourne continues with lavish advertising in our local newspapers in readiness for a formal opening of a housing estate for elderly citizens now being built within the grounds by Larkfleet Homes.

We refer to The Croft, until recently a dilapidated and vandalised property in North Road that has been the subject of a prolonged planning dispute but now being transformed into an age exclusive estate of one, two and three bedroom properties for the over 55s with the main house at its centre.

We have advised the developers that the use of the name manor house for this very ordinary and comparatively new property is incorrect but to no avail and in view of the latest advertisements that have appeared in our local newspapers it looks as though it is here to stay. “To the Manor Bourne”, says the announcement. “Join us for our special week of events to celebrate the refurbishment of the original Manor House at The Croft.” There follows a list of hobby classes to be held during the week from Monday 15th to Saturday 16th October, including art and dance classes, wine and cheese tasting and flower arranging, all designed to attract retirement couples who might be tempted to sell their homes and buy one of the 68 bungalows and chalets here for their retirement.

The dictionary definition of manor house is the former home of a lord of the manor which is not the case here. This is a relatively modern property standing in seven acres of land and dating from 1922, a town house built as a family home for modern living by local farmer and corn merchant Richard Gibson (1879-1958) with no connection whatsoever with either of our two ancient manors, those of Bourne and Bourne Abbots, both of which date back to mediaeval times and to call The Croft a manor house may be an attractive marketing ploy for the £8 million development but it is a misnomer.

Richard Gibson chose The Croft as a suitable name because it fitted the design, the original meaning being an enclosed plot of land adjoining a house occupied by the owner. Admittedly it was a spacious property comprising an entrance hall, cloakroom, lounge, dining room, two kitchens, five bedrooms, a dressing room and a large bathroom while outside was a detached garage for two cars, a tennis court and grassland. But it has no claims to antiquity and the term manor house is totally unjustified.

Nevertheless, it is now being used regularly by the developers and will no doubt soon enter the guide books and street maps and as the years go by the name will eventually be referred to in the annals of Bourne, so proving once again the famous remark by the American car maker, Henry Ford, that history is more or less bunk.

Thought for the week: If this council has money to spare, it should be spent on encouraging industry in the town. It is lamentable that money should be wasted. Our children should be trained first to take jobs. There is plenty of time for leisure later on. I want this council to spend its money wisely and well. We should not waste it on these silly things. - Councillor Lorenzo Warner (1901-95), speaking at a meeting of Bourne Town Council on Tuesday 20th June 1978 when it was decided to call a public meeting to ascertain whether there was sufficient interest in skateboarding to warrant the provision of suitable facilities. No skateboard park was built as a result.

Saturday 13^th October 2012

Although the future of our public library has been assured by Lincolnshire County Council there is by no means a confident feeling abroad that this much valued amenity is safe in their hands. The existing location in South Street which has served the town well for over forty years is currently being phased out and everything moved to the Corn Exchange where a Community Access Point is being established, a grand way of describing the packing of all essential services into one place as a means of saving money.

Economies on this scale inevitably mean reduced services as we have seen elsewhere and here there is an obvious shortage of car parking spaces while the register office which is moving from West Street will lose the ceremonial room where civil weddings are currently conducted. There may be other examples that will only become evident when the new facility begins operating early next year.

But to foresee what might materialise, we have to look at what is happening elsewhere in the county, as with the town hall which is now being phased out and most likely offered for sale, an eventuality predicted by this column a year ago after other historic buildings in the county suffered a similar fate. Now it is the turn of the library and although the county council is promising full steam ahead for an entirely new amenity which will surpass the old one in access and efficiency, we have no means of knowing whether that will come true or whether this is just propaganda rhetoric to quell criticism.

Consider the case of Long Sutton, a small market town similar to ours just down the A17 the other side of Spalding. There has been a great deal of concern over the future of their library which it is claimed is about to be downgraded by being shifted to much smaller premises in the Market House, a move considered to be so likely that 500 people have signed a petition demanding that it should be kept where it is. In addition, posters have been plastered all over town to support their protest and feelings are running very high indeed.

Organiser Sarah Gander told the Lincolnshire Free Press that people had the wrong idea if they thought that the library was safe at its existing location (October 1st). “I have it in writing that discussions have taken place about moving it to the Market House where it would be cut down in size and where there is no parking”, she said. “It is only a year ago that money was spent on automating it with a self-service system.”

All of which sounds very familiar to us here in Bourne and where concern for the future of the library is equally intense. But Councillor Eddy Poll, executive member for cultural services, has been quick to reassure everyone. “There has never been a proposal to move Long Sutton library and we would not make such a change without consulting the community”, he said in a statement. But he added later: “Of course, I cannot give an absolute assurance not to move or close any libraries because I have no idea what is going to happen in the next spending round.”

So there we have it. Anything or nothing may happen. No firm promises can be given and so we must accept what we are being told and make our own judgment. At least here in Bourne we are not going to lose our library when the South Street premises do close. But whether it will be the same size or a slimmed down version lacking some of the existing amenities we will have to wait and see until the Community Access Point opens. After that, its future will be in the hands of those who determine the county council budget and as the council tax is to be frozen for another year, then the financial implications from next April do not bode well for the future.

The people of Louth have also been defending their library but Councillor Poll has said that there was no intention of closing that. “In fact”, he said, “Lincolnshire is one of the very few local authorities that has not closed a single library. Instead, in the last two years we have resourced libraries to be run by volunteers at Sutton Bridge and Saxilby and another one is in the pipeline at Winthorpe, all without making any staff redundant.”

We must, therefore, trust our councillors even though the county council does sometimes tend to economise with the facts. Remember that news item from their free magazine County News a short time back (Summer 2012 edition) singing the praises of shifting the public library 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”, thus making it obvious that the writer had either not visited the Corn Exchange or was simply glossing over certain obvious disadvantages that will be created by the move.

My article last week about the valiant efforts of Bourne people to welcome hundreds of Ugandan Asians who had been evicted from their country in the autumn of 1972 has brought back memories for two local people who had first-hand experience of the operation to give the refugees shelter when they passed through the town on their way to resettlement camps in north Lincolnshire.

Various groups swung into action to provide a welcome, notably the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service who invited several local organisations to help, among them members and wives from Round Table and Rotary Club and the Ladies Circle. Reception centres were set up at the Corn Exchange and Bourne County Secondary School for rest and refreshment during a break in their journey from Stansted Airport but helpers were urgently needed.

Bourne Round Table held its charter night dinner the following week when town and district councillor John Smith, who was then chairman, gave a graphic account of the events to guests:  “Last Thursday, we received a request from the WRVS to help staff the reception centres. They asked for manpower and within half an hour, I had all the helpers we required. Two thousand Asians eventually passed through Bourne, 200 of them on the first night. They arrived absolutely weary and they were very grateful to us for the welcome they received.”

Remembering the occasion 40 years later, Councillor Smith said this week that it was the sheer number of volunteers that had made the operation such a success in receiving the Asians, providing them with refreshments, clothing and medical supplies throughout their brief stay which was so remarkable.

Meanwhile, the Corn Exchange had been similarly busy and among the helpers there was Dorothy Alexander whose late husband Ron Alexander (1920-1998) became Mayor of Bourne in 1977. They had just moved to the town from York where she had been active with the WRVS and was recruited to carry on her work once she arrived. “There must have been a dozen of us who assembled at the Corn Exchange”, she remembered this week. “The Asians were due at about 5 pm and we were to serve light refreshments but because of some difficulties, the coaches did not arrive until 8 pm. As the days went by, our group became more organised and we were on shifts day and night.  I can remember getting up at 2 am some mornings to arrive on time for duty. It was quite sad to see these people arriving quite bewildered, not all speaking English and wondering what to expect next.  Some had tales to tell of their rush to the airport in Uganda, just abandoning possessions and leaving their expensive cars and other possessions behind.”

There was another gesture from the town which received widespread praise when Bourne Urban District Council offered a flat to one of the refugee families. A local newspaper later commented: “Bourne has every reason to be proud of its voluntary organisations which gave their services to ensure that the Ugandan Asians passing through the town were given sustenance and friendly greetings. In rallying to the call of the WRVS which directed operations, they brought credit to their organisations and honour to Bourne. When the Asians arrived, they were personally greeted and knew that they were welcome to Bourne hospitality. When acknowledging the magnificent part they all played, one must remember the council’s gesture in offering a home to one of the families. By doing so, the council probably brought Bourne to the notice of the resettlement authorities and everyone is to be congratulated on making their contributions to overcoming racial barriers.”

In fact, the flat at Brook House, Eastgate, went to Bhaskaran Nair, a 43-year-old teacher who had been awarded a Master of Arts Degree at Travancore University in India where he studied history and politics and who therefore became Bourne’s first Ugandan Asian refugee. He had run five schools in Uganda employing 100 staff but lost everything on being ordered to leave the country. He had sent his wife and three daughters to his native India for safety but now he had accommodation, they planned to join him later.

The case of Mr Nair's resettlement in Bourne was reported by the national press and subsequently became a cause célèbre which attracted the attention of Enoch Powell, then a Conservative M P campaigning against immigration. On 14th November 1972, he tabled a question in the Commons asking why Mr Nair, of Brook House, Eastgate, Bourne, having been born in India, which he left for Uganda about 1955, was admitted to this country. David Lane, Secretary of State for the Home Department, replied that Mr Nair was a U K passport holder. "Many of those admitted in the present emergency were born in India and subsequently became citizens of the U K and colonies by registration in East Africa", he said.

In the meantime, Mr Nair was looking for work but found a job teaching at Bourne County Secondary School by the headmaster, Howard Bostock, who offered him a short term contract until he could get permanent employment. During his time at the school, he became extremely popular with both pupils and staff who invited him into their homes but eventually left to seek pastures new.

Summer has gone and autumn fades gently into winter but not before giving up the abundance of its woods and hedgerows where blackberries, sloes and rose hips are so plentiful that the byways around Bourne have changed colour in many places. There was a time in my early days when such fruit was collected before it was really ripe because we were hungry for anything and the annual blackberrying trips into the countryside inevitably meant that we would return home with scratched hands and arms and our mouths stained purple with the juice of the fruit we had eaten on the way.

Blackberries were collected by the basketful and my mother turned them into jars of jam that became one of our staple diets during my childhood. Sometimes, when out early enough in the morning, I would return home with some wild mushrooms but those occasions were rare indeed because everyone was anxious to find food and the berries, hazel nuts and crab apples were snatched off the trees and bushes as soon as they were ready for picking.

We also raided the countryside in pursuit of some extra pocket money because during those austere years of rationing when the food available had little sustenance for growing kids, the government issued an annual appeal for the fruit or hips of wild roses that are rich in vitamin C and could be turned into a syrup that was particularly beneficial to schoolchildren, babies and pregnant mothers. The hips were picked during the war years at an annual rate of about 300 tons, sometimes more, and these autumn collections from 1939-45 produced 2½ million bottles of rose-hip syrup that contained as much vitamin C as 25 million oranges, a fruit that had become unknown in Britain at that time because its import was a low priority when merchant shipping was needed for other purposes. I am happy to say that I was among those who contributed to this supply although I was paid at the going rate of sixpence a basketful and as anyone who has ever been picking from the hedgerow will know, that is an awful lot of hips.

But it was not all work because this season also brought its pleasures for small boys. When the golden month of October arrived, we would head for those outlying villages where the oldest horse chestnut trees grew because they produced the best conkers for our annual autumn sport. We would kick up the crisp, russet-brown leaves strewn over the floor beneath their canopy in our search for conkers and soon, the biggest of them were threaded on to leather boot laces or lengths of twine and we were merrily swiping away to determine who would be the "conquering hero" for that year.

Even today, I cannot pass a horse chestnut tree at this time of the year without stooping down to pick up one or two of these shiny red-brown nuts that nature has polished to perfection and that carry with them the recollections of boyhood seventy years ago. This year's finds are before me on my desk as I write for nostalgia is a powerful emotion and the memories come flooding back.

Thought for the Week: Summer ends and autumn comes, and he who would have it otherwise would have high tide always and a full moon every night. - Hal Borland (1900-78), leading American author and journalist who wrote editorials about the great outdoors for The New York Times for more than thirty years.

Saturday 20^th October 2012

Houses are getting smaller, a circumstance that can be witnessed in the various new residential estates springing up around the town. Gone are the days of the roomy three-bedroom property with its front and back garden and garage and in its place we have the terraced unit now marketed under the term town house.

It sounds much grander than it really is and although these modern properties are selling well, mainly to first time buyers, they do not have the space that we came to expect in years past, particularly during the property boom that followed the Second World War of 1939-45.

One factor is that society is changing. Big families are now rare, many people live alone, few residents want a large garden that takes so much time to maintain and cars are built to withstand the weather without the need of cover. Cupboards are useful, most housewives would prefer a pantry and a second loo, yet none of these are now considered essential. Kitchens are also much smaller, even cramped, but quite satisfactory for those who eat out, buy takeaways or microwave their meals rather than use an oven. Everything is changing from the way we once lived.

The other factor is the profit motive by developers faced with soaring land prices who are anxious to cram as many houses into the site as possible. Design is therefore concentrated on maximising the available area and reducing traditional family requirements and demand indicates that no one seems to mind. Not all local authorities approve of this high density development and one of the latest in Bourne, the old laundry site in Manning road, was opposed by the town council when the plans came up for consideration five years ago.

Larkfleet Homes had applied to build 47 homes on the 1¾ acres of land (0.7 hectares) comprising 16 apartments, seven two and a half storey houses, 15 of them affordable, 19 two storey houses and five coach houses but councillors complained that this would be oppressive over-development, visually intrusive and likely to cause road and safety problems, and that even 25 properties might be too many. Objections, though, even from our own local council which had first-hand knowledge of the locality, were ignored and South Kesteven District Council, which, incidentally, collects the council tax, finally approved the plans in February 2008 after ruling that the proposed scale and layout reflected those of other residential developments in the surrounding area which it clearly did not because the site is surrounded by council houses, in Harrington Street, Ancaster Road, Recreation Road and Alexandra Terraces.

These were all solidly built by Bourne Urban District Council for rent by large families in the three up and two down style during the last century, mainly between 1914 and 1960 when the population was less than half of what it is now, and are still providing serviceable accommodation with a long life expectancy ahead. Many have also been bought under the Right to Buy scheme introduced by Margaret Thatcher under the Housing Act of 1985, thus allowing sitting tenants own the homes where they lived at discount prices.

Council houses are spacious with large gardens and lend themselves to continuous development, maintenance and even enlargement by enthusiastic owners and they have held their value, selling for much higher prices than the so-called affordable houses of today which are frequently bought by housing associations and rented out to problem and needy families as we have seen at Elsea Park.

The current trend for smaller private houses is in sharp contrast to the size and quality of those built during the last century, particularly those in the Beech Avenue and Stephenson Way estates where large detached houses and bungalows line the streets, each standing in its own grounds with a driveway and front garden. Among the last of these residential developments to be built in Bourne was the Arnhem Way estate off Mill Drove in 1994 and as the century closed, the terraced town house began to appear on the street scene.

The differences are striking with the new style properties built close to the pavement with little space between them. In fact, they are reminiscent of the Victorian terraces that can still be found in many of our towns and cities where not a square inch of space was wasted and separated only by a dividing wall, but even they had their back gardens where the man of the house had a shed, vegetables were grown and often chickens reared. The new town houses are similarly crammed in but this time they are all built to the latest standards with modern conveniences and a minimum of outside space while buyers are induced by new methods of selling which include various packages such as part ownership and delayed payments rather than a traditional mortgage requiring a substantial deposit.

This style of housing now appears to be unstoppable. Planning applications for additional developments are arriving regularly, the latest in Bourne being the combined sites of the old Rainbow supermarket in Manning Road and the adjacent Raymond Mays garage, a total of 5.2 acres which will soon be covered with an estate of 108 dwellings built in the new style and known as Abbeyfields. Remarkable progress is being made and what was derelict land earlier this year is now being replaced by a smart new estate with houses in one terrace on the Spalding Road, pictured above, that will be occupied by Christmas. If similar new developments continue at this rate, the appearance of Bourne is likely to change completely within the next decade and its identity as a small market town will have gone for good.

A disturbing report has arrived from the police by email which indicates that poaching is still a criminal activity in the Bourne area. Last Saturday (October 13th), a number of deer carcasses were discovered around the villages of Irnham, Swinstead and Edenham. The animals had been gutted and prepared by whoever killed them and then moved near to the road and hidden, apparently awaiting collection. 

Police kept watch and one carcass was collected. Three people were subsequently arrested on alleged poaching offences and a vehicle impounded. As a result, the public are now being asked to help by reporting any further suspicious sightings of a similar nature.

In past centuries, poaching was far more prevalent when poor people had to resort to killing fish and game to feed their families. During the 18th and 19th centuries, deer stalking, salmon fishing, grouse and pheasant shooting took place on enclosed private land and gamekeepers and water bailiffs were hired by the owners to protect the game. The poacher therefore, not only had to catch his prey but also avoid being caught himself and man-traps and spring guns also lay in wait.

Poaching continues today but is far less prevalent and much of it is on a commercial scale. Fish are stunned with explosives and electricity and deer shot with automatic firearms. In the Bourne area, deer poaching has been evident in recent years and the 400 acres of ancient forest on the outskirts of the town, which are inhabited by large numbers of fallow deer, have been a favourite hunting ground.

There was a particularly nasty incident in March 2003 in which a fawn was found tied to a gate where it had been mauled by dogs. Forestry officials said that there was evidence that poachers dazzled the deer with powerful lamps and then let their dogs loose to bring it down until it could be killed, a barbarous practice that needs to be stamped out with the full force of the law. The fawn in this case suffered a long and lingering death and it was thought that the carcass might have been left behind as a warning to farmers and gamekeepers that they can and will be violent if disturbed.

During the 19th century, the laws against poaching were strictly enforced by the magistrates, most of whom were usually wealthy landowners, often including the lord of the manor, and woe betide anyone who came before them on such a charge. Punishment by transportation to the colonies was a frequent occurrence or failing that, a spell of hard labour in prison although such harsh penalties were not always a deterrent.

The most persistent offender on record was John Brown, a notorious Lincolnshire poacher who lived in Bourne. In September 1886, he appeared before the petty sessions at the Town Hall charged with poaching on the Grimsthorpe estate, having been caught by gamekeepers who had been keeping watch. The magistrates considered the case proved and sent him to jail for three months' imprisonment with hard labour, ordering him to find sureties of £20 for twelve months or serve a further term of six months. The court was told that this was Brown's 30th appearance for poaching having been committed to prison for several terms during the previous eleven years and paying more than £80 in fines and costs.

Poaching is hardly a job for a woman yet the magistrates at Bourne also had the dubious distinction of sitting in judgment on such a case in December 1892. They found the evidence against her proven and imposed a fine which she could not pay and sent her to jail for 14 days with hard labour in default under the Poaching Prevention Act, the first instance ever recorded of a woman being committed for poaching by the courts in South Lincolnshire.

A new traffic bottleneck has developed in Harrington Street, just round the corner from Meadowgate, which has been causing serious problems for motorists most days and especially at busy periods such as Thursday market days and Saturdays. Traffic is now often double parked, causing frequent delays in both directions as a result, especially at the approaches to the T-junction and the mini-roundabout on North Road.

This is in breach of Section 243 of the Highway Code which quite clearly states that you should not stop or park opposite another parked vehicle when it causes an obstruction yet this now appears to be a daily procedure in Harrington Street as well as parking in front of an entrance to a property which is yet another infringement.

Parking regulations are due to be enforced in Bourne from December 3rd, the date Lincolnshire County Council takes over responsibility from the police who have been notably absent in the past. From that date, we have been told that traffic wardens will be on patrol in the town and issuing parking tickets to offenders but we will have to wait and see whether their duties will be an effective deterrent.

Traffic wardens have been tried in the past but there were not many of them and Bourne found itself sharing with Stamford which was a most unsatisfactory situation and on one notable occasion, the selected officer who lived there could not report for duty because he had missed the bus and did not drive a car. There is also the possibility that they will concentrate on the easy bits such as the yellow lines in the town centre in which case Harrington Street will be missed and so the bottleneck will continue.

But at least their presence should deter one motorist I spotted recently who entered West Street from the town centre and parked on the double yellow lines outside Boots. Then after a few minutes, he crossed over and parked on the double yellow lines outside the Crown Precinct where he got out and calmly walked back to the betting shop, returning a few minutes later and driving off as though he owned the street. This is the sort of conduct that the wardens will be out to stop and perhaps next time his transgression will cost him a little more than a fiver on an also ran in the three-thirty at Newton Abbot.

Thought for the week: You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen which said "Parking Fine." - Tommy Cooper (1921-84), British television comedian and magician, famous his red fez.

Saturday 27^th October 2012

My item on the enduring appeal of our council houses last week is a reminder of an unusual experiment which took place more than half a century ago in an attempt to introduce a little colour into the new estates which were then being built around Bourne.

A new residential area was being established on farmland to the north east of Bourne as part of the housing boom following the Second World War. Among the new streets being created were Queen's Road and Edinburgh Crescent which were going up in 1953, the year that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in the company of her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, and so the two names reflected this national celebration.

These two roads consisted of 118 council houses, bungalows and flats and the owners, Bourne Urban District Council, made a dramatic departure from the traditional appearance. A variety of colours was used for the woodwork, an innovation that was announced by the Stamford Mercury on Friday 3rd June 1955 under the headline "Living in a rainbow Bourne - boldness in estate colourings".  

The report said that visitors might be surprised to see the variety of colour being used for the exterior decoration of houses which, combined with the design and layout of the estate, tended to minimise the inevitable council appearance. This experiment was largely due to an initiative by Mr C E George, architect to Bourne Urban District Council, who believed in colour variety and as a result, in one set of bungalows the doors were orange, the frames off-white and the windows turquoise green, while another combination had jonquil yellow doors with cream windows and door frames.

“The magic of the paint box has been let loose with Saxon greens, mercury reds, nursery blues, emerald greens, royal blues, cherry and maroon”, said the report. “All the schemes have been carefully planned on Mr George's drawing board and they are designed to harmonise with the rendering on the walls and the tiles which vary from marigold to dark red.”

This interest in colour began when Mr George realised that such diversity could make a great difference to the lives of council house tenants. The greens, creams and browns of the long and uninteresting council streets of the period appalled him and he was determined to do something about it. "It does not cost any more and all the residents are quite content", he said.

Prior to his work at Bourne, Mr George had designed colour schemes for 33 schools at Great Yarmouth in Norfolk where pastel shades replaced the old and institutionalised dark green and brown and in the process had removed the frequent comparison that they looked like prisons. Instead, they provided a colourful atmosphere reminiscent of fresh fields and flowers. “The houses were multi-coloured before the tenants went in and we have not yet come across a single one with a bad word for the scheme”, he said.

Nevertheless, it was still the council that controlled the colour schemes although all that changed when the Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher introduced the Housing Act of 1985 which included a Right to Buy entitlement to encourage home ownership and this enabled sitting tenants purchase the properties in which they lived at discount prices. Thousands took advantage of the offer and became home owners and from then on were allowed to alter the appearance of their properties to suit their taste and so the conformity of council housing finally ended, a standard that the old Bourne Urban District Council had begun to change so many years before.

The euphoria over winning planning permission for a skateboard park at Stamford was evident in the council chamber at Grantham last week (October 16th) when councillors voted unanimously in favour of the development despite the advice of planning officers who had recommended refusal. Youngsters were out in force to state their case and the Stamford Mercury reports (October 19th) that after a three hour debate by the development control committee of South Kesteven District Council they could be seen counting the votes on their fingers when it became clear that the decision was going their way.

This has been a remarkable community effort for the town where £150,000 has been raised for the new skatepark to be built in the recreation ground after the old wooden ramps were taken down in 2008 because they had become unsafe. The decision was also made despite concerns about the possible noise once it is up and running and complaints were made by the Stamford Recreation Ground Residents’ Association who were in favour of the project but wanted it sited elsewhere.

But the situation was neatly summed up by Laurie Copley, aged 16, a sixth former from Bourne Grammar School and a member of the Stamford Skatepark Committee, who said that “the recreation ground is the perfect place for it” and it is to be hoped that he is right.

Supporters of the skateboard park project at Bourne have been quick to capitalise on this victory which is seen as a precursor of events here where a similar project is planned. Members of the Dimension Park project went to Stamford the following day to get some advice on how it should be done and committee member Mrs Nelly Jacobs told the newspaper: “I think that if the application had been refused we would have packed up here in Bourne. It is brilliant news because this might set a precedent, the green light for us to go ahead.”

This is indeed a step forward although we should not forget the major differences involved. Firstly, the Bourne skateboard park is planned for the Abbey Lawn, an historic site already occupied by traditional sporting organisations such as football, cricket and tennis, which has already been criticised as being totally unsuitable. Secondly, there is the main obstacle of finance with an initial outlay of £170,000 to pay for construction followed by annual insurance, maintenance and upkeep.

There also appears to have been no mention of the bad reputation skateparks have gained in other neighbouring towns where similar projects have attracted criminal damage and have become a magnet for anti-social behaviour, the latest incident being reported at Coningsby where the council-funded skateboard park built at a cost of £55,000 has been wrecked by vandals before it was even officially opened. There is no guarantee that the same will not happen here and although no one would want to dampen the new enthusiasm generated by the Stamford decision, these are not factors that should be ignored.

But then if Stamford has managed it, then why should not Bourne. The town council has already been won over and now the youngsters need to persuade the sporting clubs and the tenants of houses surrounding the Abbey Lawn that they will make a good neighbour. After that, it is just a matter of raising the necessary £170,000.

Autumn is with us and, as expected, we are hearing the familiar line from one of our most famous poets working overtime as it is used repeatedly in the media by writers and broadcast presenters with an impoverishment of imagination. Every year it is the same with the result that this beautiful and descriptive metaphor of the golden season has now become a cliché.

The words are the first line of the lyric poem To Autumn written by John Keats (1795-1821) and here it is in its correct context in the first stanza from this famous ode:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells. 

Keats wrote the poem on 19th September 1819 after enjoying a lovely autumn day and he described his experience in a letter to his friend John Hamilton Reynolds: "How beautiful the season is now. How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather. Dian skies. I never lik'd stubble fields so much as now. Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow a stubble plain looks warm in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it."

It is obvious that his perceptions were at their most acute and shortly afterwards he was taken dangerously ill and died a few months later. The beautiful and subtle verse has been described as close to perfect as any shorter poem in the English language and is acknowledged as the most anthologised, pored over by the purists and quoted interminably. This accounts for the popularity of the opening line which has been used so many times over the years as the summer closes but in recent times has had such exposure as to devalue its real worth, trotted out by journalists with no thought for its actual context but merely to fill a few seconds of reference to the changing season.

My old editor always warned about using words that fall easily together and this has happened to this line from Keats that has become part of the lexicon of every lazy writer and broadcaster with no inclination to spend time in the library to find a new analogy. Popular is an acceptable description but hackneyed is hard to bear and so we must close our ears whenever we hear another reference coming on. Keats deserves better than this.

The clocks go back this weekend causing muddle and even mayhem in many households and elsewhere but this timekeeping confusion is likely to stay with us for the time being. Many advocate an end to this practice by abolishing British summer time (BST) and giving us Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) all year round but there has been tremendous opposition from farmers and other outdoor workers about the loss of daylight together with many residents in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Daylight saving, as it was known, was officially introduced during the Great War of 1914-18 but then, as now, it did not please everyone. Under the Summer Time Act, clocks throughout Britain were put forward by one hour at 2 am on Sunday 21st May 1916 after the government told M Ps that hundreds of thousands of tons of coal would be saved by the change in an attempt to help the war effort. The prospect of lighter evenings was widely welcomed, with the clocks being put back again in October, although there were objections to the new arrangement as the Stamford Mercury reported the following Friday:

Farmers in the Bourne district are not putting the new Summer Time Bill into operation but are retaining the former times for commencing and leaving off work. In all other business concerns, the new times have been worked with general advantage. Various comments had been made as to the proposed change, there being some who declined to alter their clocks and looked upon the proposal with suspicion that it meant another hour’s work a day with no corresponding recompense.

In recent years, there have been eight successive attempts in Parliament to change clock times since 1994 and all have failed but the benefits are regarded in many quarters as unassailable, not least a reduction in the daily demand for electricity all year round. There would also be many community advantages because more time would be available at the end of the day than in the morning.

In the latest attempt in 2010, there was a move to persuade the government to conduct an analysis of the potential costs and benefits of advancing time by one hour for all or part of the year when a private member’s bill on daylight saving was introduced in the Commons by a Conservative backbench M P. If the analysis found that a clock change would benefit the U K, then the government would have to initiate a trial clock change to determine the full effects.

The bill was debated on the floor but was filibustered out of Parliament by members opposed to any form of change although it is doubtful if this will be the last attempt and so the debate continues. In the meantime, we have those clocks to contend with tonight, a task that always causes a headache for collectors and museums and as not everyone is efficient when it comes to tinkering with timepieces, there are sure to be many unnecessary early risers and disrupted schedules tomorrow morning as a result.

Thought for the week: To realise the unimportance of time is the gate to wisdom. - Bertrand (Earl) Russell (1872-1970), English philosopher, pacifist and ardent campaigner for nuclear disarmament.

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