|
Saturday 7th December 2013
The speed of traffic through Bourne is again the subject of public debate with a campaign underway for restrictions in and around the built up areas where lives are at risk from accidents and vehicle fumes. This is a perennial topic frequently aired on public platforms and council chambers for the past one hundred years yet apart from a little tinkering around the edges by the police and local authorities nothing really changes and we are left with the worst of these problems, that of a trunk road bringing a constant flow of articulated lorries and vans straight through the town centre and passing a few inches away from shoppers, often mums with prams and push chairs and oldies on sticks and frames and in battery cars. The latest initiative comes from Councillor Helen Powell, a member of the county, district and town councils, who has called for a 20 mph speed zone around the town centre, particularly in those streets were schools are located, and this was the subject of a public meeting held at the Corn Exchange last week (Tuesday 26th November) when more than 40 people turned up. Such an important issue should have attracted a larger attendance but Councillor Powell was undeterred in her resolve and the positive feedback will be passed to the county council task force considering urban and rural speed limits, school safety zones and traffic calming measures. “There was real strength of feeling at the meeting and the problems raised by these dangerous roads must be addressed”, she said afterwards. “As a result it is hoped that the task group will come up with a robust policy to combat them and I will certainly be pressing for a 20 mph limit through the town centre.” A glance through the archives on the problems of traffic through Bourne does not instil confidence that anything will be done. An awareness of the coming problems of increasing traffic flows was evident in Bourne over 100 years ago when the motor car was just beginning to make an appearance on our roads. In 1909, the newly formed Lincolnshire Automobile Club supplied signs that were erected in Abbey Road warning about the dangers of the new vehicles while the notorious double bend in South Street, still an accident black spot, began to cause some disquiet yet the following year local authorities turned down a proposal to purchase land at this point to enable the carriageway to be widened. The intervening years are remembered because of the inactivity by successive county councils on this issue despite a warning as recently as April 1993 after a 20-tonne lorry overturned and blocked the town centre for two hours on a Saturday morning. The emergency services stood by because of fears that leaking diesel fuel could be ignited by the electricity supply to the traffic lights which had been flattened by the impact, an accident that highlighted the increasing danger from heavy vehicles using the main roads through Bourne and renewed calls for a bypass. The late Peter Garner, then a town councillor, warned of the danger in an interview with the Lincolnshire Free Press. "With all the shoppers about, we were lucky that no one was killed", he said. "We have got to get heavy traffic out of the town centre as a matter of urgency." In the event, it was to be another twelve years before a south-western relief road was eventually opened, a new 1.5 mile stretch of single carriageway from South Road to West Road built at a cost of £4 million by the developers as part of the planning gain for the Elsea Park estate. This has relieved the town centre of a great deal of traffic but there are still problems at busy periods when North Street is at a standstill as both lanes are jammed with heavy vehicles and although there has been much talk of a new north-south by pass for the A15, there is little or no likelihood of it materialising and this incident is therefore a stark reminder of what could happen until it is. Twenty years ago, there was a distinct possibility that Bourne would get a by-pass when the project was actually included in the projected programme for new highways with a completion date of October 1995 but the optimism was short-lived because it was later axed when the government drastically pruned its road building programme. Since then, the scheme has never even been considered and this was explained in some detail when the town council met to debate the issue in 2004 by John Kirkman, who was also a member of Lincolnshire County Council which is the highways authority. He discussed the various suggestions that have been made in previous years but pointed out that the cost of a route to the east of the town was now likely to be in the order of £7 million which was then too high and certainly would be in today’s economic climate. He added: “Realistically then, unless circumstances change, or external funding becomes available, a north-south bypass for Bourne is unlikely in the foreseeable future and I believe that we should be concentrating our efforts on things that might be or are achievable instead.” In the absence of a north-south bypass, therefore, the town centre will continue to attract unacceptable levels of heavy vehicles that are allowed to reach speeds of 30 mph which is far too fast for narrow streets through a crowded shopping centre. A 20 mph restriction is already applied to some school entrances in the town and it would therefore seem a practical and necessary precaution and one that might be achievable given a favourable review by the county council. Court reports have again begun to appear in our local newspapers. For many years, except in high profile cases, they have not been published, mainly because of a continuing reduction in journalistic staff and a general decline in coverage of local affairs by our provincial newspapers. Recent issues have carried summaries of cases heard by the magistrates although so stereotyped that they are obviously not the work of a reporter and we are told that the details are taken from court registers once cases are completed. There is a disadvantage in this in that the reports are firstly several weeks old and secondly do not include any explanation or mitigating pleas by the defendants that might clarify the wrongdoing that has brought them before the bench. In past times, court reporting was part of a journalist’s regular weekly duties and before my departure to Fleet Street, I spent endless hours at the Press benches in most of the local courts or petty sessions including Peterborough when it was based at the old gaol house in Thorpe Road, Norman Cross, held at the courthouse in Old Fletton, and, of course, Bourne and Stamford, when courts were convened at the two town halls. Local courts have since been centralised and so offenders from Bourne are heard elsewhere, at Grantham, Loughborough, Melton Mowbray and even beyond. These are among the cases that are now being published by the Stamford Mercury and The Local. In years past, our provincial newspapers carried pages of news from the courts, each case reported in great detail giving a balanced account of the evidence from the prosecution and the defence because it was widely accepted that publicity of a hearing before the magistrates was part of our justice system and anyone who was found not guilty had the right to be seen as innocent in the public prints. These reports from the courtroom were widely read and were therefore a boost to circulation. The procedure for covering the Peterborough court, for instance, was always the same. Each week we would cycle there in pairs to be seated before the magistrates entered at 10 am at the Press bench directly in front with the prosecuting and defending solicitors on either side. One reporter would take notes of the first case and then write it up for publication while the other reporter was taking notes for the second case, and so on throughout the day. Every hour, a cub reporter from the newspaper would arrive breathless after a fast cycle ride from the office to collect the written copy which was then taken back to the sub editors who passed it through to the machine room where it was set by linotype for these were what is known as the hot metal days of newspaper publishing, and by mid-afternoon, the first editions of the Peterborough Evening Telegraph were on the streets with our court reports on the inside pages. Once the day’s hearing had finished, it was back to the office to re-write every case at a greater length for the weekly editions of the Peterborough Citizen on a Tuesday and the Peterborough Advertiser on a Friday and if you got home by ten o’clock at night you were lucky. And so it went on, week by week. The pace was hard but no one questioned it because this was valuable experience for anyone who wanted to be a reporter. Today, reporters rarely attend our courts except on special occasions and so the colourful minutiae surrounding human folly and transgression revealed during these hearings that occupied so many column inches in past times and which the public found so fascinating is lost not only to readers but also to posterity. From the archives - 120 years ago: Alfred Condeenay, who described himself as “a musician on the pan pipes” and giving his address in Scotland, appeared before the magistrates at the Town Hall, Bourne, charged with begging. Police saw him calling at several houses at Morton village asking for money and on being arrested, the prisoner confessed that he had been cadging. “You’re right”, he told Constable Wilkinson. "You’ve copped me fair. But what will you take to let me free” and then offered the constable half a sovereign if he would release him. When searched at the police station, a large amount of money was found secreted in various parts of his tattered clothes, ten guineas in gold and silver was securely sewed in the lining of his waistcoat and £1 3s. 4½d. concealed in the lining of his trousers. He was committed for to prison for 14 days and ordered to pay for his conveyance to Lincoln and for his maintenance. – news item from the Lincolnshire Echo, Friday 21st April 1893.
A butterfly has been living in the house during the past week and for several days eluded all attempts to persuade it into to the outside world. We first spotted it in the bedroom, fluttering against the net curtain in an attempt to reach the sunlight outside but these are elusive creatures and it disappeared. Then a day or so later, we heard its wings beating in the lounge after breakfast, again attracted by the morning sunshine streaming in through the window, although how and when it reached downstairs is a mystery. It flitted here and there across the window space and after watching it closely for several minutes as it alighted on the net curtain where it stayed for a few seconds, unfolding and folding its colourfully marked wings, I managed to identify it as one of our summer garden visitors, a small tortoiseshell (Aglais urticae) which normally hibernates in buildings at this time of the year and re-appears in early spring. Perhaps it was woken from its slumbers somewhere in the house by the bright sunshine of early December but as it was so anxious to be back outdoors we eventually managed to usher it through an open window when it headed for the countryside out there over the fen, looking perhaps for its favourite food in a bed of nettles, and we only hope that it found another suitable roost before nightfall and the weather turns cold and inhospitable for such a delicate creature because in these times of intensive farming, butterflies are fast becoming a rarity. Thought for the week: Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. - Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64), American novelist and short story writer. Saturday 14th December 2013
The local newspapers predicted on Friday 25th October that the Wherry’s Lane project would be completed “next week” which of course was wildly optimistic, even impossible. Next spring would appear to be a more accurate forecast although even then, work will be a year behind schedule. On a more positive note, the 14 car spaces in the Burghley Street car park withdrawn from public use since the summer have now been reinstated following widespread public criticism. They were fenced off first with cones and then with wire barriers and security metal parking posts installed after being allocated to the buyers of the apartments in the corn warehouse development as and when they are sold, much to the dismay of a shopping public already facing problems of where to leave their vehicles. The barriers have now been removed together with the security parking posts while the residual holes have been concreted over, no doubt at some additional cost, but this is by no means a permanent measure because South Kesteven District Council informs me: “There is only a temporary use of those 14 spaces. They will be handed over to each resident as they legally complete on the sale of each property as originally intended.” It would therefore appear that the council has taken pity on local shoppers during the Christmas rush to free up those idle spaces until the New Year. What a pity this decision was not taken earlier because it might have avoided the loss of the October Fair which was cancelled this autumn because of the disruption to the traditional site where it has been held for the past forty years and its future now remains in doubt. The £2.2 million scheme has already caused many problems and apart from the current car parking fiasco there have also been months of traffic disruption in the vicinity caused by one-way systems and the movement of heavy vehicles, all of which should have been finished last March as promised, while established businesses must be feeling the effect on their passing trade in Wherry’s Lane which continues to look like a building site. Yet South Kesteven District Council, which is responsible for the contract, remains optimistic that the end is in sight and that the town will benefit in the long run, even though the 14 apartments being created in the old grain warehouse are being sold to private investment buyers at a time when there are 4,000 names on their housing waiting list and the seven shops that will be created in a nearby arcade are unlikely to attract new businesses while many retail properties are standing empty in the town centre at the eastern end of the passageway. There is no doubt that Wherry’s Lane needed some rejuvenation having become an eyesore over the past decade with graffiti on the walls of buildings and rubbish dumped along the edges and so the current scheme does have its merits although the council insists on presenting this project as something which it is not. We are told, for instance, that the conversion of the old grain warehouse, although not listed it does stand within the town’s Conservation Area, has “significantly enhanced the building and the surrounding area and most importantly preserved a major, undesignated, heritage asset”. The early 19th century building is indeed a relic of a once-thriving corn trade yet in recent years has been maintained only occasionally and was once seriously considered for demolition because it was serving no further useful purpose. But circumstances alter cases and as it was bought by the council in 2008 along with the nearby motor salvage workshops, two semi-detached houses and the old masonic lodge for a total of just over £1,000,000 as part of the ill-fated town centre regeneration scheme which was abandoned in 2010, something had to be done with these surplus empty buildings, not for the benefit of the people but to recoup their losses and this was it. However, the projected completion date as anyone who passes by can see is still some way off and so we will now have to wait until next year to find out exactly how the town and the people will benefit. Towns and villages across the land remember the famous from their communities by naming streets after them and in this way social history is commemorated in a tangible way. Until 1805 when the naming of streets and the numbering of houses was introduced in England, the system was haphazard and the location of houses related to the principal or most popular tavern or inn but the new system became more effective once they could be widely read as a result of the improvement in the standard of education and the new regulations were enforced by the police. Until then, Bourne was little more than a crossroads and there was no difficulty in naming the streets because they were identified by the direction in which they ran, i e north, south, east and west. As the town expanded, new streets were given names that identified them with nearby topographical features and so we had Church Walk, Water Street, Brewery Lane, Meadow Close, Water Lane and Union Street, a reminder of the workhouse that once existed there. Mediaeval Bourne was clustered around the market place that we know today as the town centre. In 1380, just seven main streets existed and any other parts of the town were merely cart tracks or footpaths. They were Northgate, Southgate, Water Gang Street, West Street, East Street, Manor Street and Potter Street. Other names whose origins are deeply rooted in past history that have been added since are Bedehouse Bank, a reference perhaps to an ancient monastic or prayer house that was once situated in the vicinity, Coggles Causeway where the surface was paved with small round stones or coggles, an alternative to cobblestones, the Austerby and Christopher's Lane. The system of naming of streets in Bourne that we know today was not introduced until the late 19th century when the old method of common usage was regularised. This drastic change came in October 1899 when the town’s affairs were administered by Bourne Urban District Council. Members decided to rename several main streets to perpetuate local history and some of the town’s past worthy citizens and as a result, Star Lane became Abbey Road, to remember the Augustinian community that once lived here, Pinfold Lane became Hereward Street, Back Lane became Manning Road, after Robert Manning (1264-1340), the poet and chronicler who lived and worked at the abbey, and a section of Eastgate became Willoughby Road, one of the Earl of Ancaster’s family names while others are remembered with Ancaster Road and Drummond Road. The Marquess of Exeter, whose family once held the title of Lord of the Manor of Bourne where they had extensive land holdings, is remembered through Burghley Court, Burghley Street and Cecil Close, named after William Cecil, the first Lord Burghley (1520-98), Exeter Close/Court/Gardens and Street, and Marquess Court, a recent development centred on the old North Street terrace of cottages built by the marquess in 1880. There are currently around 200 street names, according to the latest town guide, and the list is a chronicle of our history because they reflect the events that have influenced the lives of the people over the centuries. The street names we have today however are a mix of official selection and personal taste although it is now one of the responsibilities of the town council to help choose them and advise housing developers. Other local authorities had this task in the past and so there is no definite pattern although, as with other towns and villages, we have our fair share of kings and queens, politicians and poets and many others who have been the subject of public acclaim. Among those remembered in Bourne is the Welsh-born journalist Henry Morton Stanley (1841-1904) who went to Africa and traced the source of the Nile and found the lost explorer, David Livingstone in 1871, and his name is perpetuated in Stanley Street. Nearby, also in the Victorian part of the town, is Gladstone Street after William Ewart Gladstone (1809-98), the great reforming statesman of the 19th century who served four terms as prime minister. Royalty is well represented with Victoria Place, Alexandra Terraces, Queen’s Road and Edinburgh Crescent and we also have many names with military connections, notably Sharpe’s Close, off Beech Avenue, named after Charles Sharpe, the local man who won the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valour, while serving with the Lincolnshire Regiment in France during the Great War. A clutch of names from the Second World War can also be found at two housing estates off Mill Drove, one commemorating the Arnhem invasion in 1944 and the other the Burma campaign in which Earl Mountbatten gave distinguished service. Past landowners, the church, the medical profession, council chairmen and businessmen are among the great and the good whose names adorn our streets and Bourne's reputation as a railway centre in years past is also remembered with Stephenson Way, built during the 1970s on land once occupied by the main line to Sleaford and named after George Stephenson, inventor of the Rocket steam engine and a leading figure of the new railway age during the early 19th century. More recently, flowers and trees have taken precedence, an apologia perhaps for covering a once green countryside with bricks and mortar, and so we now have Bryony Gardens, Laburnum Close, Maple Gardens, and Yew Tree Close with Buttercup Drive, Campion Way and Marigold Avenue, while lately some herbs have been added with Coriander Way, Rosemary Gardens, and Thyme Avenue. Except in special circumstances when streets need to be related to a specific person or event, names from the garden and countryside do seem to find favour with councillors and developers and as Bourne is expanding at an extremely fast rate then they will need to keep a close eye on their botanical lists to keep pace in the future. Among those names selected for street names by Bourne Urban District Council in 1899 was Job Hartop but somehow members never got round to implementing the recommendation although all of the other names chosen by the committee are still in use today. Hartop (1550-1595) was a farmer's boy working on the land near Bourne but hankered after a life of adventure and ran away to sea when he was 12 years old. After a short apprenticeship with a gunpowder manufacturer in London, he signed on with the English admiral Sir John Hawkins and in the company of the young Francis Drake, sailed the Spanish Main, those ripe waters of the Caribbean inhabited by pirates and privateers in search of gold, silver, gems, spices, hardwoods, hides and other riches that could be plundered from galleons homeward bound for Spain and brought back to England. He was captured by the Spanish on his third voyage and served ten years as a galley slave and thirteen years in a Spanish prison but managed to escape and make his way back to Bourne where he spent his final days recounting his adventures in the town's taverns, although the privations he suffered had taken their toll and he died at the age of 45. Hartop’s claim to immortality in his home town has already been chronicled by a previous historian, J J Davies, in his book Historic Bourne (1909) when he described Hartop as "an honourable even if not eminent man, with the maritime greatness and enterprise of the age of Elizabeth" and added: "These spacious times showed few braver men than the valiant sailor Job Hartop. He fought like a true British sailor against Spaniards who captured and imprisoned him for 23 years. What long-drawn agony that meant, what faith and manly fortitude it demanded." This is the sort of local name that should be remembered along with the mayors and councillors who usually predominate and as we are getting more new streets now than at any other time in our history because of the rate of new house building, this would be a suitable opportunity for the omission to be remedied. I am therefore asking the town council which makes these recommendations to consider him when the next opportunity arises to name new streets in order that Hartop and his adventurous spirit may be remembered by generations to come. Thought for the week: Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering. - Theodore Roosevelt (1858-1919), naturalist, explorer, hunter, author, and soldier and the youngest person ever to become president of the United States at the age of 42. Saturday 21st December 2013
West Street butcher Richard Stevenson ready for the Christmas trade There is always a lively debate at this time of the year
over the state of Christmas and whether the religious observance of past times
has been overtaken by commercial considerations, that prayers and worship have
given way to a wild spending spree and unrestrained carousing. The discussion is
a healthy one because whatever our own feelings, without hearing opposing views
we tend to become opinionated and arrogant.
There is abundant energy being manifested in
the seasonable decorations of the various business establishments at Bourne. The
butchers have quite a fine show. Mr Mays [George Mays, butcher, Eastgate] has
killed 300 sheep (two of which have been lately exhibited at the Smithfield
Show, one weighing 211lb., the other 187lb.) and 9 beasts. Mr Williamson [Joseph
Williamson, butcher, North Street] has on view one of the prize beasts at the
Bourne show. Mr Mansfield [William Mansfield, butcher, Church Street] had a
splendid show of fat stock on Tuesday, including Mr J Grummitt's [John Grummitt,
farmer, North Fen] prize beast at Bourne show. The grocers' windows are
tastefully adorned with appetising wares; and the milliners' and drapers'
establishments also present an artistic appearance. The Christmas celebrations continued in the town for the next few days and the newspaper reported on December 30th:
Bourne Abbey was throughout adorned with
seasonable decorations for Christmas. Though not so elaborately ornamental as in
some previous years, the general effect was exceedingly pleasing. Over the
communion table in white letters on a scarlet ground was the text "Emmanuel, God
with us". The centre was occupied with a beautiful white cross. The miniature
arches were filled with a pretty arrangement of evergreens interspersed with
flowers. The reading desk was decorated with ivy and holly, the panels in front
being ornamented with chrysanthemum crosses, the centre one of the St Cuthbert
type. The pedestal of the lectern was gay with a choice selection of flowers and
evergreens, a fine bunch of pampas grass being especially noticeable. We hope that as in years past you too will enjoy your Christmas
and despite the current economic gloom can look forward to the New Year with
happiness and good health, hope and optimism. This column is taking a break over
the holiday but will be back in a fortnight’s time although the web site
continues and so please keep logging on. Return to Monthly entries |
