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Saturday 6th December 2014
There was never the faintest hope that lowly Bourne would be included in the £15 billion roads investment announced by the government this week. Eighty new schemes were listed in what ministers have described as the most far-reaching programme in decades and of course it does concentrate on those strategic motorway links on which the country depends and even the slightest whisper of a north-south relief road for the A15 through this small market town would have been met with howls of derision. But then, this has been the case ever since such a by-pass was first mooted half a century ago and although everyone else around here has one, Spalding, Sleaford, Market Deeping and even Northborough, the likelihood of Bourne getting one is even more remote now than it was then. Yet the damaging effects of using North Street, our main shopping centre, as a major thoroughfare for through traffic are witnessed every day because a continuous flow of vehicles of all sizes thunder through at peak hours just a few inches from pavements often filled with people such as pensioners, children and mums with toddlers in pushchairs, spewing out lethal petrol and diesel fumes and shaking the buildings on either side to their foundations. Added to this daily chaos is a total disregard for the traffic regulations by many drivers, as witnessed at mid-morning on Wednesday when the entrance to North Street from the town centre was gridlocked which is now becoming a regular occurrence. A delivery lorry was parked on double yellow lines while the driver was unloading outside the Heron supermarket and towards the town centre, a car and two vans, one either side of the road, were also parked on double yellow lines, with the result that nothing could move for a time and all traffic came to a standstill. Traffic wardens are supposed to have been operating in Bourne for the past two years but you will look in vain for them when needed and I have yet to meet anyone who has spotted this uniformed rarity whose presence was intended to stop drivers from leaving their cars in restricted areas and so make the roads safer for everyone. They would also have had a busy time in Harrington Street on Wednesday morning when cars were lined along the pavements on both sides and close to the junction with Meadowgate, a clear case of violating the on-street traffic restrictions yet there was not a warden in sight despite Lincolnshire County Council claiming to employ twenty of them all wearing distinctive navy and green uniforms to make their presence apparent. 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 here because he did not drive a car and that day had missed the bus. Perhaps there are similar reasons why we are now being so badly served. Or it could be that Bourne does not provide such rich pickings in fines as say, Lincoln, Boston or Grantham, where traffic is much more frequent and an observant warden could earn a week’s pay most mornings. Odd things turn up in attics especially when the owner dies and relatives are left scratching their heads trying to identify them. Such a situation is puzzling retired company director Tony Brooks who has a mystery teapot on his hands which came to him under similar circumstances. It is part of a three-piece silver service recently inherited through the family after the death of a relative. The presentation teapot, sugar bowl and milk jug were found in a box stored in the attic of a cousin’s house at Telford, Shropshire, and although the provenance is quite clear the exact reason why it was originally handed over is a mystery. Tony, aged 80, of Beech Avenue, Bourne, is the grandson of William Brooks who died in March 1949, aged 66. He lived in North Road, Bourne where he worked as the man from the Pru, the name given to local area representatives of the Prudential Assurance Company because their work involved meeting their clients in person at their homes. But he was also interested in sport and was a keen supporter and voluntary worker for Bourne Town Football Club. The work he did must have been greatly appreciated because when he left Bourne and retired to live at Northfield, Birmingham, the club gave him the silver tea service inscribed: “Presented to Mr W Brooks by the Bourne Town Football Club in recognition of his valued services, February 1939.” But Tony Brooks has been unable to find out what these valued services were and the football club have been unable to help either. “My guess is that he must have held some important office to be honoured in this way”, said Tony, “perhaps treasurer, in view of his financial experience, or even secretary. Unfortunately, no one seems to know where the club records are for this period or even whether they still exist and so I am still in the dark.” After William Brooks died, the tea service, together with his grandfather clock, were left first to his wife, Ethel, and then when she died twenty years ago they were passed down through the family and finally inherited by Tony earlier this year as the eldest living male in the Brooks line. “I have searched every possible avenue but without success”, he said. “I even asked the town council for help but they had no information either.” The town clerk, Mrs Nelly Jacobs, passed the query on to me but an exhaustive search through my own records and the available archives of our local newspapers have failed to produce any information about the role William Brooks played with Bourne Town Football Club. But perhaps readers may be able to help solve the mystery and if so, please contact Tony at 78 Beech Avenue or telephone him on 01778 426089 and he will be eternally grateful. The days of the familiar red post boxes in our streets may be numbered. Despite rendering useful service to the public for over 150 years, the signs are that they are being phased out by reducing their practical worth. These red metal letter containers, free standing, set into a wall or, more particularly, the famous pillar boxes which can be seen in many streets around the country, have become an iconic symbol of the nation and recognised the world over. They first appeared in Britain in 1853 at the suggestion of Anthony Trollope, the Victorian novelist, then working as a surveyor’s clerk for the Post Office, who had spotted similar roadside boxes in successful use while visiting France and Belgium. They have been with us ever since, always standing sentinel somewhere in the neighbourhood as a reminder that the Royal Mail was at the ready to deliver a letter or postcard overnight to any address in the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, this service has been in decline for many years and following the government sale of its 60% stake in the business in October 2013 for an undervalued £3.3 billion, it is now widely regarded as unreliable and that economies are in the offing to cut costs. Several months before the deal was done, one of our own postmen here in Bourne predicted that once privatised, the post boxes would be among the first to go and it would appear that he is being proved right with the closure of the one in the foyer at Sainsbury’s supermarket in Exeter Street earlier this year. Now, changes in collections from many of the others around town, including the one I frequently use in Northfields, are being made that will certainly make them less convenient and therefore reduce their usage because the last daily collecting time has been switched from 5.30 pm in the evening to 9 am in the morning on weekdays, 7 am on Saturdays, a ridiculous hour for anyone to post a letter or card and to do so afterwards would mean that it would not be collected until the following day. However, the notice on the box now reminds customers that they can go to either the pillar box in North Road half a mile away where there is a 4 pm collection or to the main Post Office in West Street where the last post is at 6 pm although to catch that, it will now mean a long trek into town with all of the attendant hassle of finding somewhere to park. It is therefore obvious that fewer items will be posted in these boxes, a situation which will eventually give the Royal Mail the opportunity to withdraw them from service on the grounds that because so few people are using them, they are no longer economical. This seemingly minor change may therefore be regarded as a policy decision to reduce the current postal service even further. We only have to take a look at the arrangements for posting and delivering letters a century ago to realise how poorly we are now being served. In 1905 for instance, when the postal service had become universally popular and extremely well used, the arrangements were quite surprising when compared with today and Kelly’s Directory for Lincolnshire that year recorded the system operating in Bourne: Letters from London, by mail cart, via Peterborough, arrive at 4 am and are delivered by 7 am. A second mail arrives at 11 am and is delivered to callers at 11.30 am. A third mail arrives by rail at 2.27 pm and is delivered by 3 pm and a fourth mail at 6 pm and is delivered by 7.20 pm. Letters from Folkingham arrive by mail cart at 7.45 pm and despatched thereto at 4 am. Letter box closes for town and district at 5.45 am, for general despatch at 10.30 am, at 3 pm for all parts, 5.30 pm for Dyke, at 6 pm for Wales, Scotland, Ireland, North and Midlands counties; London and all parts at 7.20 pm and 7.55 pm; Folkingham at 8 pm. Sundays boxes cleared at 7 pm. Wall letter boxes: Eastgate cleared at 8.55 am, 2.30 pm and 7.05 pm; South Street at 8.35 am, 2.20 pm, 3;15 pm and 6.45 pm; West Road at 7.50 am, 4.30 pm and 6.50 pm; North Road at 8.45 am, 3.50 pm and 7 pm. Tales abound of the confidence the public had in the postal service and any collector of old postcards will know of frequent messages on them telling of an arrival later that day, the card having travelled on the train to its destination only a few hours earlier. Today, despite the cost having risen to astronomical proportions when compared with the penny post of old, second class mail is likely to be delivered at any time while the delivery of first class mail next morning cannot be guaranteed and even if it does arrive the following day as promised, it may not, as happens in our street, be with you much before lunchtime, sometimes even late afternoon. It therefore appears that the Royal Mail has given up on providing the efficient service for which it was famous of old and with the advancement of electronic technology and the continuing growth of private courier and delivery companies it can only be a matter of time before the entire system is phased out completely and the grandly named Royal Mail consigned to history. From the archives: The day delivery of letters in Bourne, which previously took place shortly after 3 o’clock in the afternoon, now commences about 11.30 a m. The train, which heretofore was due at Bourne at 10.58 a m, is now timed so as to reach Bourne at 11.20. By this alteration, a letter posted in London early in the morning may be delivered at Bourne the same day about noon. – news item from the Stamford Mercury, Friday 9th November 1860. Thought for the week: Mail your packages early so the Post Office can lose them in time for Christmas. - John William "Johnny" Carson (1925-2005), much-honoured American comedian, writer, producer, actor, and television host who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1992. Saturday 13th December 2014
There has been so much criticism of the unfortunate move by our council services to the new Community Access Point at the Corn Exchange in Bourne that one minor addition has been quietly forgotten and that is the provision of new public lavatories. But they are not quite what we expected when we remember the assurances of past times to give Bourne state-of-the-art public toilets and as recently as 2003, a new 36-foot toilet block was promised at the entrance to the market square behind the Town Hall at a cost of £100,000. Councillor Linda Neal (Bourne West), leader of South Kesteven District Council, told The Local newspaper on Friday 7th February 2003: "The toilet facility will complement any core centre redevelopment. It will be a high quality provision and will be built as soon as it is feasibly possible." Instead, the new public loos are tucked away unobtrusively on the west side of the building (pictured above) and are so small as to be totally insignificant and you may be forgiven for missing them, two small coin-operated cubicles each the size of a broom cupboard although excellently equipped with wash basin, clean, light and airy. Perhaps they have been installed by the council on the premise that small is beautiful, a challenge which seems to have been their slogan for the entire move to the Corn Exchange because the new public library is cramped for both borrowers and staff while accommodation is limited for the town council whose members hanker to be back in the spacious surroundings of the Town Hall. However, these mini-loos are now the only public lavatories left in Bourne, the last block in South Street having been shut to coincide with their opening. The record of public lavatories in Bourne is not a good one, a story of neglect and closure and a total disregard by the local authorities of what is actually needed. In fact the situation was so bad at one time that a district councillor advised the public to use the shops and public houses instead, a suggestion that was received with anger by traders and landlords and derision by the people. Until recent years, Bourne had three blocks of public toilets, one at the Recreation Ground in Harrington Street but now demolished because of vandalism, another at the North Street bus station which was pulled down in 2007 for the same reason, and the oldest block in South Street which has now been closed in favour of the new facility at the CAP. The luxury loos were promised by SKDC as part of the much heralded “core centre redevelopment” for Bourne which was ignominiously scrapped in June 2010 after almost ten years of planning at enormous cost without a single brick being laid and although toilet needs are no less necessary, out with it went all prospects for new luxury loos to serve our expanding population. Instead, we have this facility tacked on to end of the Corn Exchange which we suppose is better than nothing although the cubicles may be difficult to find for motorists who stop in Bourne having been prompted by those huge roadside traffic signs indicating that public lavatories are available. On a monetary note, inflation has also caught up with a visit to the public lavatory which in past years was always one penny in old money and inspired the immortal euphemism “Going to spend a penny”. Now the cost has shot up but I don’t think that “Going to spend 20p” is likely to catch on. An idyllic image of how the Red Hall should be has been described by conservationists that would most certainly benefit this ancient mansion as well as the town but unfortunately there is little or no chance of it ever becoming reality. Anthony Jennings, of Bourne Preservation Trust, claims that the immediate environs of the building should be enhanced because its present setting does little to demonstrate its superiority as one of only half a dozen such houses still standing in Britain that was designed by the great Elizabethan architect John Thorpe. Yet Bourne has treated this legacy disgracefully because the Red Hall has twice been threatened with demolition and he has recalled this ignominious history in an article for The Local (December 5th) in which he calls for the present setting to be improved because, he says, it is surrounded by industrial clutter in South Street that not only conceals the building but defaces the whole area. “Commercial premises like builders’ merchants and garages should have no place in front of the Red Hall”, he writes. “Let’s have a grand curtilage to the building with proper formal gardens. The Regency lodge that still survives at the northern end of what were once its gardens could be incorporated into this setting. Such a project would present difficulties but even if it proves impossible to create enough open space in that way, at the very least we can surely have an ornamental drive sweeping up to the Red Hall from South Street.” Anthony Jennings paints an unattainable picture of what might be but never will, an idealistic pipe dream that reckons without the major barriers that have thwarted so many such plans that would benefit this stately pile, apathy and officialdom, because such a scheme would need the combined efforts of the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Department of Transport, English Heritage, the county, district and town councils, private property owners and Bourne United Charities, and imagine a roomful of their representatives trying to agree on such a scheme in a discussion that would soon deteriorate into a bureaucratic babel. A sample of the official indifference that such a proposal might generate may be determined from the reaction of members of Bourne Urban District Council when the future of the Red Hall was being considered after its century-long railway role ended sixty years ago. Few members wanted to keep it even when offered for just £1, and when the issue was discussed in July 1954, it was described as "a useless building" and “a white elephant” while one councillor said: “The people of Bourne don’t want it under any circumstances. I say let it fall down and the sooner the better.” There followed a vote of 33 to 19 against the council taking over the Red Hall and a demolition notice was subsequently issued in November 1957. A statement from the British Transport Commission which then owned it said: "We regret that the Red Hall should have to disappear but it has become quite apparent that the interest shown in the building as an historical object finds no financial expression in support of it." Fortunately, wiser counsel prevailed and the Red Hall survives today through the foresight of local councillor Jack Burchnell and the Bourne United Charities who rescued it in 1962 and restored it for the good of the town. However, a scheme of that magnitude today, such as that outlined by Anthony Jennings, is quite likely to encounter similar opposition from our elected representatives who at county level have already shut the Town Hall and shrunk the public library while the district council has tried to sell off Wake House for commercial development and the town council voted in January 2007 to demolish the Victorian chapel in the town cemetery and although this was later saved by a Grade II listing, Bourne Preservation Trust has still not been given the key of the door to begin a much-needed restoration project. The moral is therefore clear. Conservationists must accept that the vandals are forever at the gates and that only a small part of their dreams can ever be realised while here in Bourne, such a worthy project as that suggested for the Red Hall will have to remain an unattainable vision of what might have been. There is no doubt that the appearance of the Red Hall was at its best in the early 19th century during the tenure of Lady Catherine Digby who spent much of her time building a fine garden and tending the extensive grounds before she died in 1836. We have a glimpse of what it looked like with a description by Joseph Davies (1856-1920), headmaster of the Abbey Road Board or Council School for 33 years, from his book Historic Bourne published in 1909. Prior to the railway era, he wrote, the Red Hall would rank as one of those stately homes of which England was justly proud. "Even now, in its prosaic business surroundings, it retains much of its external attractiveness. Its many gables, its graceful solidity, its barred and leaded panes, and its distinctive main entrance arrest the attention of the visitor. It is one of those delightful English homes of ancient peace that appear to grow out of the soil, and not to dominate the district like the French chateau. “Formerly, it was surrounded by a deep moat (traces of which are still perceptible), and partly by a morass. The hall stood in its park, some of the magnificent trees of which are still standing. Two fine gateways on the old avenue roads leading to the main entrance now stand isolated, one (with the armorial bearings sculptured over the arch) faces the ancient Cavalry House while the other fronts the Austerby. The imperious present has hustled out the leisurely past. "The hospitable gates rust on their heavy hinges. The drives are now grass grown. Where the coach rattled gaily now nibbles the necessary sheep. Where were my lady's terraces, the locomotive runs. But traces of the avenues may be seen. Old inhabitants are loud in their praises of Madam Digby's beautiful garden. An ornamental lake spanned by a picturesque bridge, and surrounded by beautiful trees, occupied the site now covered by the railway platform. The variety of timber in the park, as well as its artistic arrangement, was remarkable. The fine yew tree near the main entrance is much admired.” The setting for the Red Hall was therefore far more extensive than that which we see today, crammed in as Anthony Jennings describes, between commercial buildings with private housing fast encroaching on the surrounding land but after reading this description by Joseph Davies, it is hard to believe that anyone would wish to pull this mansion down. However, whether sufficient enthusiasm could be mustered and the many obstacles overcome to improve the present prospect in the manner he has so graphically described is another matter. Santa's siren call sounds forever nearer and although we dread the onset of this commercially driven time of year few can deny that warm feeling of friendship and family which it evokes and the accompanying goodwill and conviviality that have become part of the occasion. The magi, however, could not have envisaged what they were starting when they took their gifts to the baby Jesus, thus beginning a tradition that has survived for 2,000 years and in this age which seems to be driven by a retail therapy, the giving and receiving of presents has reached gargantuan proportions. Christmas shopping has been underway for some weeks because there is hardly a store that is not already decorated with colourful baubles and filled with customers deafened by Jingle Bells while the pace quickens as Christmas Eve draws nigh. Added to this, we have the growing phenomenon of online shopping which has already gathered momentum with record sales in recent days and a forecast that shoppers in this country will spend £17.4 billion online this festive season, an increase of almost 20% over last year. Unfortunately, as the big web sites such as Amazon, M & S and John Lewis are taking the strain, our High Street shops are drowning under the tidal wave of opposition, unable to match the low prices offered by the Internet outlets and dragged down by rising business rates and rents. The most mournful prediction is that within a decade, the welcoming shops that once played such an essential part in our lives will have been turned into mere showrooms for the goods bought online, a frighteningly dismal prospect for those who remember the Christmas shopping of yesteryear as part of the thrill of the festive season. Thought for the week: From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. - Katharine Whitehorn (born 1928), British journalist, writer, and columnist known for her wit and humour. Saturday 20th December 2014
The year ends with the best news for shoppers for some time that Lidl is to open a supermarket in Bourne. This may not seem a momentous retail event for those who are content with those grocery outlets we have but anyone who is a customer of the discount chain will know that they offer quality goods at reduced prices that make Tesco and Sainsbury’s look very costly indeed and the savings have made it well worth the trek to Stamford or Peterborough to do the weekly shopping. Lidl Stiftung & Company KG is a German global discount supermarket chain based in Germany with over 10,000 stores across Europe and has grown consistently since launching in the United Kingdom in 1994 with more than 550 stores. Although still a small player in this country with a grocery market share of less than 5%, its importance along with that of continental no-frills competitor Aldi has begun a retail revolution and is growing in popularity simply because prices are competitive and quality is paramount while many housewives reckon that shopping there saves them 30% or more on their weekly bill over their more well-established rivals. Frequenting Lidl two or three years ago was thought to be a down market habit but the economic crisis and a spell of continually rising prices by the main supermarkets has changed all that and now they are just as busy and when we made our usual call at the Stamford branch on Monday the store was crowded and we had difficulty in finding a parking space. Nevertheless, we left with a loaded trolley and a marked saving in expenditure and like many other Bourne customers who were there that day, we now look forward to our own branch closer to home. The store will create 40 new jobs and the site chosen is off the A15 close to the Raymond Mays roundabout, next to the Sugar Mill public house and restaurant and the new McDonald’s drive-in takeaway. A planning application will be submitted to South Kesteven District Council next month with a public consultation taking place at the Corm Exchange from midday until 5.30 pm on Thursday 8th January. “We are extremely excited over the prospect of bringing one of our stores to Bourne and serving fresh quality produce to the local community”, said a company spokesman. “We would like to thank everyone for the support we have received so far and look forward to answering any questions at our consultation event.” The arrival of Lidl has not been unexpected because there were hopes that the company would take over the premises in the Burghley Arcade vacated when Budgens closed in April 2008 but the Co-operative Food became the new tenants in October 2010. Since then there have been repeated rumours that the company has been looking for a suitable site and this has now been realised. Once up and running, Lidl will undoubtedly have consequences for our shopping habits and existing supermarkets are certain to feel the effects, especially in view of their price creep policy over recent months when shoppers have been dismayed to find that the cost of groceries, drinks and other goods have been rising almost weekly. Competition is essential because it always works in favour of the customer and Lidl’s track record in recent years augers well for the future because they will either force down prices elsewhere or there are certain to be casualties among those who refuse to change. A great deal of time has been spent during the year remembering the Great War of 1914-18 because this has been the centenary of its outbreak. It would therefore be fitting to remember those men from Bourne who spent their Christmas in the trenches and we do have some idea how they felt through the letters they wrote to their loved ones back home. This war particularly remains an emotive period in our history because most families were touched by tragedy while the personal stories of the soldiers who took part reveal a love of home and country even at the most desperate times and a yearning to be back with their families at Christmas. We have no exact figure of how many men from Bourne fought in the war although it has been estimated that around 250 served at a time when the population of the town was only 4,350 (1911 census). Of these, 97 men were known to have lost their lives when the war memorial was erected in South Street in 1956 although it is now known that 37 names were missed and so the number of those who never came back was 134. Most wrote letters home although only a few have survived but because of them we know that their private thoughts were of family and friends and the life they left behind. Even in these terrible conditions, the soldiers celebrated the festive season and among them were several old boys from the council or board school in Abbey Road. They had been encouraged to write home by their old headmaster, Joseph Davies, whose name figures in many of the letters in which he is remembered with affection. Among those who kept up a correspondence with him was Private Samuel Tipler whose family lived in Eastgate. He had attended the school for five years and in January 1916, at the age of 21, he was serving in Flanders with the machine gun section of the 5th Northamptonshire Pioneers when he wrote to Mr Davies about his experience of spending the festive season at the front. “On Christmas Day we enjoyed a very happy and pleasant time here in the trenches and we hope our generous friends in Bourne who sent us each such good things and a Christmas pudding, oranges and nuts, will accept our sincere thanks. Soldiers out here, though they have to face many difficulties, feel that the Christmas spirit brings a remembrance of home.” Private Tipler was obviously homesick and remembered his schooldays with pride, reminding Mr Davies that his brother, George, was also serving in the army and another brother, Walter, with the navy. “You know, sir”, he wrote, “we Tiplers of Eastgate are trying to do our best for old England, serving under her good old flag. I am hoping to meet some more of my old school pals and talk over old times. We do not forget our old school motto ‘Watch and Pray’. I wish you all a happy New Year.” He was also a poet because the letter includes a lengthy and graphic account in verse about the bombardment of the trenches and a recent encounter with the enemy:
The shells begin their
havoc, “I hope you like this piece of poetry”, he wrote. “I've been thinking it out and writing it here in the trenches. I want every word to tell its plain story. To my mind it was a glorious day. I've tried to tell you how we face battle. May God hasten the day of victory when we shall have the enemy in our grip, for victory is coming.” Mr Davies was obviously impressed with the letter from his former pupil because he made a note of it in the school admission register against the entry recording Samuel Tipler’s departure from the school on 31st November 1907. Also serving in Flanders was Private Percy Lunn, aged 22, of the 1st Battalion, the Northamptonshire Regiment, who lived in Woodview, Bourne, and had been a pupil at the Abbey Road School from 1900-1908. In January 1916, Percy wrote home about Christmas Day in the trenches, an account with echoes of the now famous story of an unofficial truce along the Western Front two years earlier when parties of British and German soldiers met in No Man’s Land to exchange seasonal greetings and songs. “We had a happy Christmas here and enjoyed ourselves merrily singing songs and carols”, wrote Private Lunn. “The music of the voices really sounded beautiful on the still night air. We sang some of the songs that I learnt at our old school. We will make up for lost time when we all get home together after this is finished.” The offensive in France during the summer of 1916 known as the Battle of the Somme was one of the bloodiest military operations ever known and resulted in one million casualties from both sides. Film taken during the fighting was given two public showings by the Bourne Electric Theatre Company shortly before Christmas when the Corn Exchange was packed on both occasions and additional seating was installed to cope with the crowds. The flickering silent images on the screen were probably the first pictures of the war to be seen in Bourne and the mud and blood of the Somme stunned the audience into total silence and many were moved to tears. The response was the immediate formation of a fund to buy Christmas gifts for the Bourne boys, the proceeds of £35 from the two screenings being the first contribution followed by a flag day in the town which produced a further £14 and a house-to-house collection that pushed the figure up to £102 [£7,200 at today's values]. As a result, over 200 parcels containing food, sweets and tobacco were eventually dispatched to local serving soldiers at the front while postal orders for 7s. 6d. [£25] were sent to 30 more soldiers who were wounded and recovering at hospitals in both Britain and France. There were also four Bourne boys who were prisoners of war and money was sent to the Central Relief Committee in London to pay for Christmas parcels to be forwarded to all of them. Unlike many of their comrades, Privates Tipler and Lunn survived the war but ironically, the return that all of the boys longed for, to be home by Christmas, eventually happened but it was not until 1918 when the peace celebrations in Bourne were marked by a dinner at the Corn Exchange for 300 soldiers and ex-soldiers and a gathering at the Abbey Lawn where a silent tribute was paid to the town’s dead heroes who had not returned. These are the events we have been remembering this year to keep faith with the promise then made that they would not be forgotten. Christmas was a sombre celebration in Bourne in 1914, the first year of the war when many families were without their breadwinner who was fighting in the trenches and so the luxuries of the festive season were denied them. Hand outs were therefore all the more welcome and they came from Harrington’s Charity, one of the most important funds to help the less well-off that exists to this day. Wealthy philanthropist Robert Harrington who died in 1654 left his fortune for the benefit of this town and his name is perpetuated in Harrington Street and although his bequest was a generous one, he could never have envisaged the way that his investments were to increase in value. His business interests were in that part of England that is now Leytonstone in London and the rapid expansion of the capital in the past two centuries has resulted in a phenomenal rise in the income that has been generated from his legacy that is now administered by Bourne United Charities. During that bleak winter in 1914, Harrington’s Charity was not only handing out pensions varying in amount from three to five shilling a week but also distributing coal and blankets to help cheer the poor and needy over the Christmas period. Robert is reputed to have trudged to London as a young man to seek his fortune in the early 17th century and he succeeded because we in Bourne are still enjoying the fruits of his labours three centuries later because weekly payments are still made to a number of deserving pensioners. We are taking a break over Christmas and New Year and although the web site remains open and accessible there will be no Diary but will be back on January 3rd. We thank everyone who has logged on during the year to give us encouragement, a necessary ingredient if we are to keep going as we hope to do during 2015. In the meantime, although the greeting may be an old fashioned one, it is no less sincere when we wish everyone the compliments of the season. Thought for the week: It was always said of him [Scrooge] that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, "God Bless Us, Every One!” - from A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), one of the most popular English novelists of the Victorian era and a vigorous social campaigner. Return to Monthly entries |
