Bourne Diary - September 2014

Saturday 13^th September 2014

The decision to support the use of the Town Hall as a cinema is a convenient conclusion for those local authorities that were instrumental in ending its role as the civic centre of this market town after almost 200 years.

History will not confer their closure decision with the wisdom of authority because the move to a centralised access point at the Corn Exchange for all council services including the library has not been popular and far more costly than originally estimated with the result that this fine Grade II listed building was left empty and likely to be occupied in the future by a Weatherspoon or even a carpet warehouse. The interest now being shown by a family of cinema entrepreneurs is therefore a timely escape for our councils from continuing public vexation at what was done in their name without any proper consultation as to what the people might have wanted had they been asked.

Lincolnshire County Council which claimed ownership of the Town Hall, had of course wanted to dispose of the building on the commercial market to get it off their hands and raise a bit of cash into the bargain but this column, supported by others, quite rightly pointed out that it was not theirs to sell, having been paid for in 1821 by public subscription and as a result, ownership was still vested in the people rather than an item in the authority’s property portfolio. The council therefore stepped back from this course of action and a leasehold agreement with the new owners is now a more likely way forward.

Nevertheless, Bourne has still lost its central seat of power in a building that has dominated the town centre for two centuries as the offices of those who have been running our affairs and for the dispensation of justice by the magistrates sitting at the petty and quarter sessions and there is no way that it can ever be replaced by the cramped space now causing such irritation for both customers and staff at the council’s grandly named Community Access Point in the Corn Exchange.

If all goes according to plan, the new tenants will turn the building into a bijou cinema, whatever that may mean, similar to other projects they are now running, namely the Regal at Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, and the Ritz at Belper, Derbyshire. Tony Mundin, who is currently negotiating with the local authorities in the hope of bringing this to reality, is eager to emphasise the benefits awaiting Bourne. “The positive effect of the cinema cannot be underestimated”, he told The Local newspaper (August 29th), “with several restaurants opening to complement them and other businesses seeing a significant upturn directly related to the audiences we cater for. We feel we have an important role to play in the well-being of the towns in which we operate and feel that Bourne would make an ideal location for our next cinema."

This may all be wild optimism because Bourne certainly does not need any more food outlets and it would be difficult to name any local business that might experience an increase in turnover simply because a cinema has opened up down the street. But we would not wish to dampen such enthusiasm and if the moving pictures do return to Bourne, then it would be churlish not to wish the project well, if only for giving a new lease of life to an old and much loved building rather than see it languish and deteriorate through disuse and neglect.

A little more than optimism will be needed to ensure that a new cinema will succeed in Bourne where the last one closed almost 25 years ago because of declining audiences. Television was blamed for its demise together with hundreds more across the country and since then we have the added distractions of the Internet and social media and, of course, DVDs and film channels that enable us watch movies in our own homes when we wish. Going to the pictures is no longer the pleasure it was and although smaller cinemas are surviving there is always an element of risk in launching a new one.

Moving pictures came to Bourne in 1925 when screenings were staged at the Corn Exchange which became a regular venue for film shows on three nights a week. They were so successful that a permanent cinema for the town became a viable business proposition and in 1929, the Tudor Cinema was opened in North Street, built in mock Tudor with a distinctive A-shaped gable and a half-timbered frontage. The owners were a company called Bourne Picturehouse Ltd and the auditorium had room for 588 patrons with an orchestra pit for the pianist who accompanied the silent films of the day. The opening date was December 2nd when the first three nights were devoted to a screening of the silent film The Sea Beast, a 1925 adaptation of Herman Melville's famous whaling novel Moby Dick, starring Lionel Barrymore and Dolores Costello. Admission prices were 1s. 3d., 1s., 9d. and 6d. in the pre-decimal days when £1 = 240 pence.

The cinema continued showing silent films with a piano accompaniment until the talkies arrived on Monday 21st September 1931 when queues formed down North Street to experience the wonder of the age. The Jazz Singer, starring the vocalist Al Jolson and containing the first spoken words on screen, was shown to an astounded public and so a new age of cinema buffs became addicted to the silver screen. The entertainment continued throughout the Second World War from 1939-45, usually with twice-weekly performances of different films, from Monday to Wednesday and from Thursday to Saturday, when the programmes included regular newsreels showing the progress of the Allied armies on all fronts, one of the most popular features of the cinemas during this period of our history.

When the war ended, Bourne Picturehouse Ltd sold the Tudor to the Star Group who re-quipped it in 1946. New projection equipment was installed together with a brilliantly illuminated screen, the orchestra pit was declared redundant and removed, new seating and carpets were fitted and the auditorium redecorated. The now "deluxe" cinema also had a new name: the Tudor Super Cinema and it was given a grand re-opening on Monday 9th September 1946 with the film The Valley of Decision starring Greer Garson, Gregory Peck and Lionel Barrymore, playing for the first three days of the week followed by the Technicolor musical State Fair starring Jeanne Crain and Dana Andrews from Thursday until Saturday.

Wide screen entertainment such as Cinemascope and Panavision started to attract filmgoers to nearby towns after it was introduced in 1953 and this signalled the death knell for those rural and back street cinemas that were either too small to install such facilities or could not afford them. The increase in car ownership provided more convenient travel facilities and this exacerbated the problem and attendances at the Tudor started to decline and closure appeared inevitable but it came slowly. On Wednesday 14th August 1963, the Star Bingo and Social Club opened on the premises for three evenings a week and films were restricted to the other three available evenings but they too ended in May 1972 when the building was sold to Silverline Entertainments Ltd who planned to use it entirely for bingo sessions, a gambling craze that was by then sweeping the nation.

The end of the cinema was a loss to Bourne and film fans raised a petition with 330 signatures in an attempt to keep it going and although the new owners agreed to screen films on Sundays and Mondays, the idea was short-lived and screenings were soon confined to a few Saturday morning matinees

In April 1977, the projection equipment was purchased by two local film enthusiasts, Jeremy Perkins and Robert Edwards, who installed it in a converted warehouse in Burghley Street and called it the Bourne Film Theatre where they remained for several years before moving to new premises behind North Street. This was an intimate 55-seat cinema that gave pleasure to many people for the next few years, staffed entirely by Mr Perkins and his wife Jane. The project was run as a film society with members paying £10 a year to keep it solvent and it managed to screen the latest films within a few months of their release. Although it was able to cater for 330 patrons a week, the cinema rarely had a full house and one evening it closed because no one turned up. Nevertheless, it continued to operate until the lease expired in November 1990 when that too closed down and Bourne has had no cinema since.

The old Tudor cinema, however, survives, having been put up for sale in the summer of 1989 with a price tag of £165,000 and in May 1991 it re-opened as a Chinese restaurant, dishing up portions of chop suey and fried rice instead of a feast of Clark Gable and Jean Harlow.

Quick detective work by the good citizens of Bourne when they spotted a theft taking place from a shop in the market place resulted in two teenagers being transported to the colonies for ten years.

The two lads had only just arrived in town in the summer of 1848 and were staying at Kingston’s lodging house, a disreputable establishment in West Street used by tramps, itinerants and down and outs, and finding themselves short of money, plotted to make some through theft. They therefore went into town with the intention of stealing and came across the millinery shop in the market place run by Mrs Jemima Todd which seemed to be a suitable prospect because there was no one inside.

The younger of the two, Thomas Bennett, aged 15, opened the door and went in and after looking round to make sure that the shop was empty, went behind the counter while his friend, James Baker, aged 19, kept watch outside. After a few moments, Bennett came out with his pockets bulging, shut the door and the pair hurried back to the lodging house.

Unfortunately, their actions had been observed. Mrs Hannah Barnsdale, housekeeper for Henry Bott, landlord of the Angel Inn across the road, had been watching from an upstairs window and could clearly see what had been taking place. She reported to her employer and he called Mrs Todd’s husband William, who kept the drapery shop next door to his wife’s millinery establishment, and he went off in pursuit, to be joined by Mr Bott and the town constable as he reached the lodging house.

Here they found Brown covered up in bed and claiming that he had been there since the night before but a search of the room revealed Bennett hiding under a nearby bed with the haul from the shop close at hand, consisting of nine rolls and a further 20 yards of ribbon valued at £2.

The lads were apprehended and charged with theft, appearing at the Kesteven Sessions held at the Town Hall in Bourne on Monday 16th October when the jury found them guilty. The court was also told that the pair had been convicted of a felony at Quadring, near Spalding, the previous year and had been sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.

The chairman of the bench, General William Johnson, said that the two accused had evidently been living on the public for some time and as they had not taken the warning by their imprisonment, it would be for the advantage of society to send them out of the country and so he sentenced both to be transported for ten years. James Brown, also known by the name of Baker, and Thomas Bennett, also known by the name of Tuck, subsequently sailed for Tasmania aboard a convict ship and their fate after that is unknown.

From the archives - 128 years ago: Last Saturday afternoon, as the 3.24 pm passenger train from Spalding to Bourne was running at a rate of thirty-five to forty miles per hour, it ran into a covey of partridges. The fireman, George Palmer, seeing the birds, put out his hand and caught one, which was not in the least hurt. We need hardly add that the bird was taken care of for domestic purposes. - news item from the Grantham Journal, Saturday 18th September 1886.

Thought for the week: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. – Old English proverb.

Saturday 20^th September 2014

Newly built council houses in Harrington Street

Affordable housing may soon be a thing of the past as local authorities allow developers renege on their original promises when seeking planning permission for new residential developments unless they can make a profit.

The scheme was introduced through a series of policy changes by the government 25 years ago to provide social housing at a time when house prices were increasing and inflation soaring, an important issue in Bourne which was expanding at an alarming rate, but the planning laws were relaxed in 2012 in an attempt to revive the construction industry.

The original idea was to include affordable housing on all new residential developments of five dwellings or more as part of the Section 106 agreement on planning gain, a provision which has had a direct impact on estates such as Elsea Park where more than 2,000 new homes are being built, the biggest expansion in the history of the town with a fair sprinkling of affordable housing. But there are also smaller housing schemes which are also important to the town such as the new homes now being built on the old railway freight yards on either side of South Road, 46 having been built on the eastern side with 46 planned for the second stage on the western side, both with affordable housing included at the planning stage with South Kesteven District Council.

But the developers, Linden Homes, have now been back to the council seeking a review of the planning consent and approval to proceed without the affordable housing element included on the grounds that it would not be financially viable and the council’s planning committee has agreed that the development may proceed without them. “The second phase will not include any affordable housing”, a council spokesman told The Local newspaper (September 12th). “Should the value of what the developer receives in sales be above the expected amount, that will come back to the local authority to be invested in affordable housing.”

This is not good news for young people seeking to find their own home, a prospect that recedes daily for all except the affluent as inflation bites deeper into incomes which largely remain static or at least never keep up with the result that couples are forced into financial arrangements to either rent or buy that they cannot afford and are often doomed to land them deeply in debt.

In years past, it was comparatively easy to buy your own house, usually on a 25-year mortgage which was paid assiduously and when the debt was cleared you were handed the deeds by the building society and the place was yours. The generations that benefited from this simple arrangement are now mostly over fifty, the majority being old age pensioners, a strata of society of home owners that is slowly disappearing as the Grim Reaper beckons.

Today, home ownership has become a far more complex arrangement and the procedures available usually mean that prospective purchasers will never actually own the properties they think they are buying but will be forever paying out through interest only mortgages and various help to buy or assisted purchase schemes or trapped in negative equity created by the current housing boom while the leasehold system is often a minefield of legalities which prevent outright ownership in your lifetime.

Financial prudence only comes with experience and young couples just setting out on life together often need two incomes to meet the monthly mortgage repayments and even then this may stretch their resources to the limit but anxious for their own four walls, they largely ignore the pitfalls and are liable to sign away their future without thinking about the consequences which are likely to result in recurring financial problems and finally repossession and the loss of money already paid out.

House prices in this country have risen faster than earnings over the past thirty years while the average age of first time home buyers has increased and this, coupled with the deregulation of the rental market and the housing supply, has created the current situation in which average house prices have rocketed from around £10,000 in 1970 to the astronomical figures being demanded today, thus making the housing market difficult to enter. Affordable homes were a way forward for many who have now settled in and even moved up the housing ladder. But the relaxation of such regulations by our local authorities can only mean that fewer such properties will be available in the future.

Council housing once filled the need for young people to find their first home and large numbers were built in Bourne during the last century. Although many have been sold to sitting tenants, over 500 remain but South Kesteven District Council has indicated that it would like to get rid of them, as demonstrated by its abortive effort to pass them on to a housing association in 2006 when a campaign to persuade tenants costing around £1 million failed as 73% of them voted against the idea which was scrapped as a result.

They remain a popular form of social housing with over 400 people in Bourne queuing up to get one yet instead of providing more, the authority blithely spends its money on building fourteen private flats in the £2.2 million Wherry’s Lane development for sale to private and investment buyers. Where, we wonder, are our local councillors when decisions such as this are ventilated in the council chamber and why is their voice not being heard on behalf of the people who need them to speak up on their behalf?

The council houses in Bourne are far larger and more spacious than the new properties currently springing up around the town, few of which have gardens and often no garage yet the cost remains prohibitive for the many young people seeking somewhere to live. If councils continue to allow developers call a halt to the inclusion of affordable housing of their estates then they have a duty to build more council houses as they did in the past to help them on to the property ladder.

A genuine dress by Worth has been added to the gallery display at the Heritage Centre in Bourne celebrating the life of one of Bourne’s most famous sons. The stunning creation is an evening or ball gown in burgundy silk made to order at the Paris salon where the great man dressed the world’s rich and famous.

It was handed in to the Heritage Centre in South Street by a local lady who was given it by friends living in France, one of whose ancestors had it made by the House of Worth, suggesting that it might be suitable for a place in the Charles Worth Gallery which opened in April 2006 to celebrate the life and times of the solicitor’s son from Bourne who subsequently left for France to pursue his career in fashion, becoming founder of haute couture and dressing many of the world's most prominent women from celebrities to royalty and including the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III.

Members of the Civic Society who opened the bag found to their astonishment that it contained a Worth dress made in 1921, inspired by the great man and most probably the work of his son, Jean-Phillipe, who took over when his father died and whose designs continued through the use of dramatic fabrics and lavish trimmings. The garment also bore the distinctive Worth label in embossed fabric, thus marking it out as one of particular excellence.

Charles Worth died from pneumonia on 10th March 1895 at the age of 69 although the House of Worth flourished well into the 1920s. But the great fashion dynasty came to an end after his great-grandson, Jean-Charles (1881–1962), retired from the family business and in 1956, the House of Worth closed its doors, two years short of a century of creating sumptuous and artistic gowns for the world's most renowned women.

There are already two Worth dresses on display in the gallery but both are copies, made by ladies who volunteered their needlework skills to produce garments identical to the originals which are now in museums. The first is a style known as Visite and made from off white silk with braid and bead trimmings, originally designed by Worth in 1885 and bearing the label of his salon at No 7 Rue de la Paix in Paris. The second is a glamorous ruby red evening gown completed from a design Worth produced at his Paris salon for one of his rich lady customers which is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

The latest addition has now been given a prominent place in the gallery which has made its mark during the eight years it has been opened, attracting visitors from around the world, particularly Australia and the United States, and assisting many students working on theses for their fashion degrees. “The new dress has become the most important item now on display”, said Mrs Brenda Jones, chairman of the Civic Society which runs the Heritage Centre and who was instrumental in opening the gallery. “We have a wide variety of other artefacts, documents, photographs and garments, but this is now by far our pièce de résistance.”

Meanwhile, one of the long-standing mysteries in the life of Charles Worth has finally been solved. His father, William Worth, who lived at Wake House in North Street where he also had his law practice, lead a profligate life and eventually deserted his wife and children who went to live with relatives.

William Worth died in obscurity at Billingborough on 12th November 1878, aged 89, but there is no record of the fate of his wife, Ann (nee Quincey), a local girl he had married on 2nd December 1816. Research by the Quincey family has now revealed that she died at Highgate, London, on 3rd September 1852, aged 59, from sub-acute gastritis and is buried in Highgate cemetery. It has also been established that her name was simply Ann, and not Mary Ann as has been believed, the name used by Charles Worth’s biographer, Diana de Marly, which has been widely copied [Worth: Father of Haute Couture, Batsford, 1980].

One question, however, still remains unanswered and that is what she was doing in London in 1852. Her address on the death certificate is given as North Road, Highgate, and Paul Quincey, of Hampton, Middlesex, who has provided this information, has suggested that perhaps she may have recently returned to England after attending the wedding of her son, Charles, who was then working for Gagelin and Opigez in Paris, the leading fashion fabric retailers of the day, where he met Marie Augustine Vernet, an attractive sales girl, who became his bride. They were both 26.

It would seem to be a natural conclusion that his mother would be invited to the wedding although her later presence in London remains unexplained. Nevertheless, the date and circumstances of her death now remedy an omission in the archives and provide even more information about the family for the Charles Worth Gallery which now has a copy of Ann Worth’s death certificate for display.

Charles Worth never forgot his roots even after he had achieved international fame, returning to Bourne several times, and a fascinating story survives about one of his visits which was related by Dr John Galletly (1899-1993), the local general practitioner, who was told it by a patient early in the 20th century. The Worth creations became internationally known because he dressed the world's ladies of fashion but he was always on the lookout for new ideas and one day, a lady who prided herself on dressing fashionably, was waiting for a train on the platform of Bourne railway station when she became agitated by the conduct of a man who appeared to be keeping her under close scrutiny. Unable to bear such unwanted attention any longer, she sought out the stationmaster and complained that the stranger was rudely walking round her and staring intently at her dress. The stationmaster smiled and replied: "Madam, you should feel honoured because that man is the great Worth himself."

Thought for the week: Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. - Gabrielle Bonheur (Coco) Chanel (1883-1971), French fashion designer and founder of the Chanel brand who was once listed among the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.

Saturday 27^th September 2014

The prospect of the disused Town Hall in Bourne getting a new lease of life have faded after proposals to turn it into a luxury cinema were shelved because the interior is unsuitable for this purpose. Our local authorities are therefore back to the drawing board to find a useful future for this Grade II listed building which has been the centre of civic life in this town for almost two centuries, a role that ended when all council services were moved the new Community Access Point at the Corn Exchange last year.

It has been standing empty now for 18 months and there have been fears that it would be sold on the commercial market, thus raising the spectre of an unsuitable role such as a public house and restaurant or even a carpet warehouse, but Lincolnshire County Council which has been claiming ownership has discovered that as the building was financed in 1821 by public subscription, it was not theirs to sell and so a leasehold agreement is now a more likely way forward.

A cinema therefore seemed an acceptable undertaking for our county, district and town councils and there was even tacit public approval but the entrepreneurs behind the idea who already run similar projects in Leicestershire and Derbyshire have had second thoughts after their architects decided that the main courtroom was too small to make an appropriate conversion viable and have withdrawn from negotiations.

The future of the Town Hall therefore remains uncertain, the grandest public building in Bourne and occupying a prime location in the town centre yet empty and disused although it is no secret that many members of the town council are hankering to be back in these spacious surroundings for their meetings rather than continue in the cramped new space at the Corn Exchange where there is insufficient room for any large attendance by members of the public.

The council has indicated that it would like to take over the Town Hall and the old public library building in South Street, also vacated in favour of the new Community Access Point, but at the moment these are merely aspirations and the road to achieving such objectives would by long and difficult because Lincolnshire County Council is unlikely to surrender control easily. The consequence is that the building will remain empty for the time being and continue to deteriorate, the effects already evident at the rear where the upper floor window frames are in urgent need of attention while other signs of decline will inevitably become manifest with the passage of time.

A photograph of springtime in the Wellhead Gardens at Bourne went winging its way around the world at the weekend to demonstrate the power of Twitter, the social media platform that gives everyone the chance to say something about their lives.

The opportunity came when a dairy farmer from Brazil filed a photograph of cherry blossom in full bloom in a public park. The trees running either side of the main path were cloaked in a stunning mix of pinks and reds and although the blossoms are not so dense or the colours so intense, the view reminded me immediately of the Wellhead Gardens in springtime and so I replied attaching my own photograph which immediately caught the public mood because within minutes it was being re-tweeted by contributors around the world, including a lady in Japan  where these flowers have a special significance, appearing between January and May and attracting thousands of visitors observing the centuries-old practice of picnicking underneath. 

Cherry blossom is reckoned to have originated in the Himalayas and although extremely popular in Japan it has also become a favourite in many other countries and as a result is now widely distributed in Europe and the United States and although most varieties cultivated for ornamental use do not produce fruit, their annual blossom is sufficient cause for their presence. For this reason, they were chosen for planting along the main path through the Wellhead Gardens when they were established in 1956 and have brought an annual attraction to visitors ever since although since my photograph (pictured above) was taken in April 2011, several of the pink varieties have either died or been vandalised and replaced with white although the springtime display they produce is equally delightful.

Always the bridesmaid and never the bride appears to be our motto for the annual East Midlands in Bloom competition for the past nine years no matter how hard our volunteers work each year the coveted gold eludes us and so it has been in 2014, winning instead yet another silver gilt award.

But this second best is no mean achievement because Bourne again proved that the town can put on an annual show to be proud of and this year the result was achieved through the involvement of schoolchildren, businesses, traders and the community to ensure that the total number of points increased on last year.

This is the seventh successive time that Bourne has won a silver gilt award although it has not been for want of trying to secure the supreme accolade, especially the dedicated work by a band of volunteers headed by Mrs Nelly Jacobs, clerk to the town council, who put in many hours to keep this town ahead. It has been suggested in the past that some owners of retail premises do not give it their full support although this summer’s display was far better than previous years due to the involvement of businesses, shopkeepers and the community with the Willoughby School in South Road receiving a judges’ award for their sensory garden which was described as “truly exceptional, allowing the most profoundly disabled children to interact with the projected surroundings”.

This year’s rating was again an excellent effort but the organisers remain undeterred in their resolve to win the coveted gold. “We were happy to see our points increased over last year although we would have liked to have been a little higher”, said Mrs Jacobs who attended the presentation ceremony in Nottingham. “We only have a small budget for this annual project and depend almost entirely on the goodwill of the community but next year we hope to build on that involvement.”

This annual event is community based and designed to encourage cleaner, smarter and more attractive town centres in the region by involving the people and giving them the opportunity to make our streets attractive, not just for the judges when they make their tour during the summer but also for the many visitors who arrive here with Bourne either as a destination or merely passing through. The work carried out in successive years is the perfect example of how a small market town should look and we should remember that if people like what they see then they will come again.

Although Bourne has only been entering this competition for the past nine years, the idea of tapping the competitive spirit to keep our towns clean and smart is not new and despite the current elusiveness of a coveted gold award, this town has won a similar accolade in the past.

It was in 1965 that Bourne was judged to be the best kept small town in the Kesteven area of Lincolnshire and Bourne Urban District Council which then ran our affairs, was presented with a metal plaque and trophy by the Council for the Preservation of Rural England for winning this competition in which 101 villages and towns took part.

An additional prize was a tree of their own choice and the council selected a flowering cherry that was planted near the entrance to the Abbey Lawn during a civic ceremony by the chairman, Councillor John Grummitt, with representatives from Bourne United Charities in attendance. The winning plaque was presented during a meeting of the council on Tuesday 14th December 1965 by Mrs Philip Welby-Everard, representing the executive committee of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, who congratulated the town on its success and said that it was not necessarily beauty for which they were looking. "The vital factor is tidiness and at least one place in our area loses every year because insufficient attention is paid to this", she said. "The competition is important because it makes people take a pride in their towns and it is directed at young people as much as anyone."

The cherry tree flowers still and the small plaque nearby reminds us of this success which, as now, is a reminder that Bourne is a town of which we can be justly proud. The award was won for a second time in 1978 when a similar trophy and metal plaque were awarded by the CPRE and by this time, Bourne had its own town council. The commemorative tree planting took place in March 1979 and was carried out in the War Memorial gardens by the mayor, Councillor John Smith, who still serves this town on both the town and district councils.

This is a bumper year for blackberries, according to the Woodland Trust, a countryside fruit that is appearing in great quantities as a result of the wet winter followed by weeks of sunshine. The birds are eating their fill and anyone with an appetite for this seasonal fruit will find them in large quantities all around Bourne, in the woods and hedgerows, along the roadside verges, on waste ground, around the edges of the playing fields and even on housing estates where huge bushes of brambles can often be found full of luscious large berries just waiting to be picked.

Yet this annual bounty no longer seems to attract the pickers of yesteryear. In my boyhood, we would be off most days with the family shopping basket and assorted containers and a walking stick if possible to reach those high branches, seeking out the secluded places that had the best berries and keeping the location a secret from our friends lest they should go there too and take our fruit. After a few hours, we would return home laden, often a stone or more, our hands black with juice and our mouths stained from repeated tastings. Blackberries were not only a succulent, delicious fruit but they were also free and a boon to a working class family. We ate blackberry pie, blackberry crumble and plain blackberries with milk, cream being far too expensive, but the bulk of them were turned into jam by my mother, jars and jars of it which were stored in the pantry to keep us fed at breakfast and tea during the winter months.

Blackberrying appears to be a minority interest these days. What was once a common source of food now seems to be a dying tradition. We rarely see anyone out picking and while the fruit rots on the stem, supermarkets sell them for high prices. Perhaps people are too lazy to venture out and pick their own or maybe they are unaware that blackberries are edible. Whatever the reason, they are neglecting an autumnal treat that once tried, will never again be missed.

From the archives - 137 years ago: During the past fortnight, picnics have been a frequent occurrence in Bourne Wood, the large crop of hazel nuts having been a great attraction. Parties have come from the neighbouring villages and towns almost daily, and often numbering several scores, the largest parties being from Billingborough and Spalding. - news item from the Grantham Journal, Saturday 29th September 1877.

Thought for the week: Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit. - Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), Russian physician, dramatist and novelist, considered to be among the greatest short story writers in history.

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