The Braceborough collector

The villages around Bourne continue to reveal surprises for anyone prepared to take the trouble to look. Driving through Braceborough on a gloriously sunny autumn morning in 1999 I spotted some old iron ploughs in a garden adjoining a row of early 19th century stone cottages in the High Street and stopped to investigate. They were all quite ancient, single furrow horse-drawn ploughs dating back to Victorian times, and there must have been a dozen of them ranged around the backyard as though on public display. Between them, all laid out in an orderly fashion, were many more farming bygones and items of railway memorabilia, station signs and trespass warning notices, mostly made of cast iron. 

This was the collection of Alfred Elliott, then eighty years old, whose magpie instincts over the last half a century had prompted him to amass an assortment of articles from the past. He lived at No 15 Main Street, the end-of-the-row stone cottage where he moved with his family at the age of five when his father was employed by the old Casewick Estates. 

He joined the Coldstream Guards two years before the outbreak of the Second World War and survived Dunkirk and when he left the army in 1947 after ten years' service, he returned to the cottage where he now lives with his 71-year-old wife Winifred. He worked mainly as a welder but could turn his hand to most things and in 1948 he rescued a plough from the scrap heap and this started his collection and since then it has grown into the large display that I found behind his cottage home. 

Every item he had acquired was brought home and cleaned with loving care. "I just like things from the past", said Alfred. "I cannot bear to see them destroyed." His collection had also taken over the house and the walls in the conservatory were covered with iron artefacts from past times, horse bits, horseshoes, implements and tools, while the tables and ledges were filled with old brass lamps, cobbler's lasts, flat irons and other familiar household objects that I remembered from my childhood. 

The bits and pieces he had accumulated over the years were all around the house and perhaps his most striking display, certainly his favourite because he was an old soldier, was a glass case in the sitting room full of militaria, army medals, cap badges and insignia from two world wars. There seemed to be something unusual in every nook and cranny, an old sword, a German dagger, a skeleton clock, brass hub caps, the list seemed endless and every item had an interesting story which he told with some affection. 

"I just could not bear to throw anything away", explained Alfred. "It is all part of the past and I just love everything I have." These are the sentiments of the true collector.

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