I first came to Bourne as a historian about 35 years ago in the dying days of  the Callaghan government. It was a time of unemployment before we were told to get on our bikes. Job creation was the favoured means of massaging the statistics and South Lincolnshire Archaeological Unit was graced with a motley crew of ne’r-do-wells. As small town surveys were then in vogue, we sent our MSC lads and lasses around our patch re-designing history. We did Sleaford, Grantham, Spalding, Boston, and finally Bourne before a certain lady from Grantham (of all places) pulled the plug. Sleaford was published in 1977, Spalding in the 80s, Boston in 2005, and Grantham only last Friday. I never got round to Bourne. I am grateful for this opportunity to rectify the omission.

Where to start? Well, it is customary in local studies to first look at the place-name. In the case of Bourne, it does not take us very far. As you know, the name means ‘spring or stream’. It is likely that the settlement it identified was in the vicinity of the Wellhead to which the source in question almost certainly refers.

Single element names of this kind often indicate early Saxon settlements, but here we must equivocate. The earliest forms – Brunne, Brunna, Brunum and the like – are probably Old Norse Brunnr, indicating a date no earlier than the late 9th or 10th century. It may, of course, be a dialectical rendering of an earlier English name. Or it could be an entirely new name. We just do not know.

We are thrown back on the documentary sources for the early history of the town and they are sparse to say the least. If we discount the uncertain ground of 12th century romance, the earliest is Domesday Book and there we seem to strike lucky for there are no less than seven references relating to six manors. However, once we start reading confusion sets in. Gnomic is the word that comes to mind. In fact, we cannot make sense of them without using later sources. In understanding the society of 11th century Bourne we shall have to travel as far as the 15th century. There is also a limited amount of archaeological evidence, but mostly of the negative kind. Less obvious, but nevertheless all around us today, is the street pattern of Bourne. It too gives us vital evidence as to the early development of the town.

From all this I shall argue that Bourne was a major settlement in Kesteven before the Norman Conquest. Its principal lord was a man of more than local importance and the church probably a minster. Already a significant estate centre, thereafter Bourne became the head of a barony and its lord developed it in the early twelfth century in time-honoured fashion by building a castle there, founding an abbey as a family mausoleum, and building a new town. It is here that I locate the origins of the modern town of Bourne. There, I’ve let the cat out of the bag.

Domesday Book was compiled in the late eleventh century from the returns of a survey commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1085. Threat of invasion in that year had brought into relief deficiencies in taxation and service and the aim of the survey was to inform a reassessment. Information was collected for the time of King Edward the Confessor and ‘now’, that is 1086 when most of the data were collected. We thus have a snapshot of England both before and after the Conquest. For most places in England Domesday Book provides the only reliable documentary evidence we have for their Anglo-Saxon history. Bourne was no exception.

In 1066 the largest manor in Bourne was, according to Domesday Book, held by Earl Morcar of Northumbria. The entry reads as follows:

M. In BOURNE, Earl Morcar had 2½ carucates of land to the geld. [There is] land for 2½ ploughs. Ogier the Breton has 2 ploughs there in demesne; and 4 sokemen on 4 bovates of this land and 14 villans and 4 bordars with 5 ploughs. There is half a church and a priest, and 3 mills [rendering] 30s., and 6 fisheries rendering 2½ thousand eels, and 19 acres of meadow. [There is] woodland pasture 1 league and 8 furlongs long and 1 furlong broad. TRE worth 100s.; now £8; tallage 40s.

Modern historians have pointed to this passage to dismiss the later medieval tradition that the manor of Bourne was held by Hereward the Wake in succession to his father. I, however, in an article in Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, have argued for the authenticity of that tradition. The argument is complex and technical, but I’ll try and summarize it for you. The first thing to notice is that the Domesday entry does not say that Morcar held in 1066. The past tense notionally refers to ‘the day on which Edward the Confessor was alive and dead’, i e 5th January 1066. In reality it was often no more precise than ‘sometime before now’. We know that Earl Morcar continued to hold lands up to 1071 and that some of it was acquired after 1066. Castle Bytham, for example, was held by Ulf son of Tope, as we know from his will, but Domesday ascribes it to Morcar. The fact caused confusion in 1086, for claims to his land, in Bourne and elsewhere, were dismissed or referred to the king.

So, Domesday does not necessarily tell us about the tenure of Bourne in 1066. Much of the land Morcar acquired between then and his death must have come to him by forfeiture, escheat, and the like in his capacity as earl. Now we know that Hereward was outlawed, so it is not inherently unlikely that Bourne came to Morcar as a result. That this indeed was the case is, I think, proved by the fact that Hereward conferred title on the post-Conquest lord of Bourne, Ogier the Breton. The main way in which William the Conqueror gave out land to his followers was to grant all of the estates of a single English lord. Gilbert de Ghent, for example, was given the manors of Ulf Fenisc who is mentioned as his predecessor in almost all of his manors. Legally, Ulf was his ancestor, his antecessor in the legal terminology of Domesday Book, and Gilbert had right through him as an heir. He so held Edenham to the west of Bourne and Folkingham to the north. Now for Ogier it seems that Hereward filled that position for Rippingale came into the honour because it had been held by the rebel. Witham-on-the-Hill was subsequently acquired by his successor Baldwin fitzGilbert apparently on the same basis.

I see no reason, then, to doubt the basic veracity of the mid 12th century tradition. So, people of Bourne, I urge you to rise up and reclaim Hereward the Wake as one of your own. He is an important figure in English history and should be celebrated as such here in his home town. Modern historians have, again, tended to downgrade his status. He is now usually seen as a mere man of the abbeys of Peterborough and Crowland. I think the evidence is against this. He certainly held land from both churches, but the terms by which he held Rippingale – he paid an annual rent determined by negotiation - suggest to me that he had been granted the land to buy his influence. If, indeed, he was Ogier’s predecessor, then he was clearly a king’s thegn and one of the more important personages in Lincolnshire in 1066.

If we can substantiate so much of the 12th century tradition, then I see no reason to question the assertion of the Crowland sources that Bourne descended through Hereward’s daughter. We must reject the notion that she married Hugh de Evermue or William Rullos, but a marriage with Ogier or his son Ralf is not unlikely. It is, I suspect, Hereward’s status that determined that the post-Conquest lord of Bourne would choose the settlement as his principal residence. I have tentatively accepted that Ogier son of Ungomar was not one of the great tenants-in-chief in 1086. He had no more than twenty-eight carucates and hides of land, but Bourne was his largest estate. The manor extended into Cawthorpe and Dyke with an outlier in Spanby. I think perhaps the manors in Laughton and Morton were also appurtenant to it before the Conquest. The hall was clearly in Bourne itself. The fact that half the church belonged to it suggests that it must have been somewhere in the centre of the present town. We shall come to the problems of the castle later on.

The other half of the church belonged to a second manor which had been held by Leofwine TRE. The Domesday entry reads as follows:

M IN THE SAME PLACE Leofwine had 7 bovates of land . . . to the geld. [There is] land for 7 oxen. Ogier has there 3 sokemen on 4 bovates of this land and 4 villans and 2 bordars with 2 ploughs. There is half a church, and 6 fisheries [rendering] 24d., and 2 parts of a mill [rendering] 5s., and 9 acres of meadow. [There is] woodland pasture 1 league and 8 furlongs long and 4 furlongs broad. TRE, as now, [worth] 60s.; tallage 20s.

The name Leofwine is so common that it is impossible to identify him positively. The manor, however, is clearly closely related to Morcar/Hereward’s. Not only was the church shared, but you will notice that the woodland was apparently contiguous. Ogier held it in 1086, apparently as a separate estate.

It does not obviously appear in later records, but I would hazard a guess that it was held by Leofwine the priest in 1066. A Leofwine the priest was a lawman of Lincoln at that time and by 1086 had become a monk; another, possibly the same man, held land in alms in Adstone in Northamptonshire. There is nothing to link either to Bourne. However, a clerical manor would be consistent with indications that suggest that the church of Bourne was no ordinary parochial foundation. As you know, the abbey was founded in 1138 by Baldwin fitzGilbert de Clare for Augustinian canons of the Arrouaisian reform. The contemplative ethos of the order disposed it to the choice of remote sites. Like Cistercian monasteries, most of its continental houses were well removed from the distractions of the world. Bourne, however, was founded in the parish church of a busy and prosperous community. Throughout the Middle Ages a parochial altar was maintained in the nave of the conventual church, and the abbot was responsible for the pastoral care of the inhabitants of the town through the appointment of a vicar who had a corrody at the canons' table.

In this respect, it approximated more closely to ordinary communities of canons. Embodying the aspirations of the Hildebrandine reform movement, the Augustinian rule was initially developed to reform existing communities of secular priests attached to minster churches, and indeed the earliest English foundations, like St Mary, Huntingdon, and Holy Trinity, Aldgate, were almost all institutions of some antiquity. Despite the peculiarities of its origins and practice, it is clear that the Arrouaisian rule in England often performed the same function. Both Dorchester and Missenden directly succeeded Anglo-Saxon communities, and Lilleshall was institutionally the heir to an earlier foundation, although it was re-founded on a new site.

The abbey of Bourne may have had similar antecedents. In a will of 971x983 Ealdorman Æthelmær of Hampshire bequeathed one pound to a minster church at a place called Burnan which has been tentatively identified with Bourne by Cyril Hart. No evidence has come to light to corroborate this identification, but the size of the parish of the church of Bourne is not inconsistent with a collegiate foundation. In the documented period, it  encompassed the territories of Bourne, Austerby, Cawthorpe and Dyke. At an earlier period, however, it may have extended into Laughton, Morton, and even Spanby, for the foundation charter of the abbey also confirmed these churches. By Lincolnshire standards, the parish of Bourne was large, and it is not impossible that a community of secular priests had ministered to it before the Conquest. Similar foundations are known locally at Castle Bytham and probably Edenham. I would suggest that Leofwine’s seven bovates were the land in Bourne that Baldwin granted to the abbey on its foundation in 1138.

We are left with four further manors which are identified as ‘Bourne’ in 1086. Before the Conquest they were held by Seuen, Thorkell, Healfdene, and Wulfric Wild. I shall deal with them together for, as we shall see, they were closely related to each other. The four entries are widely separated in the text, so when you read them each in isolation, nothing in particular arrests your attention. Together, though, an interesting pattern emerges. The following table lists the vital statistics, as it were, as recorded by Domesday Book.

* text has ‘six parts’, recte ‘a sixth part’.

The assessment to the geld of the four manors is in the ratio of 1:2:2:1, and so is the division of the mill, the fisheries, and the woodland. Only the proportion of meadow is askew and even there we might suspect that the Domesday scribe meant 3½, 7, 7, and 3½ acres. The manpower on the estates and their value are more disparate, reflecting, no doubt, economic realities in 1086. But the infrastructure of the manors echo each other. Clearly, at some point before 1066 a single estate had been divided into four in the ratio 1:2:2:1.

The circumstances in which this happened are, of course, not explicit. But we get some sort of clue from a similar division of an estate in Newton, with berewicks in Threekingham and Ouseby which involves two of the same lords.

The division of the geld assessment is not as precise as in Bourne, but, again, a ratio of 1:2:2:1 is apparent. This begins to look like a family matter. Before the Conquest primogeniture – inheritance by the eldest son – was not always the norm. With certain types of land known as socages it was usual to divide estates between sons and sometimes even daughters. There are several instances in the Lincolnshire Domesday that illustrate the process. The result was a proliferation of manors just like the four we have here in Bourne.

I say ‘Bourne’, but in fact these estates were not situated in the settlement. You may think that the place-names of Domesday Book are pretty much transparent. In fact, they are anything but. A name from time to time may simply refer to a particular village, but it is equally likely to refer to an estate or a unit of local government. In which case one name may refer to a number of settlements. So, how can you determine what sort of name you have, then? Well, you have to use the later history of the estates. It turns out that the name ‘Bourne’ in Domesday Book refers not to a settlement but to a unit of twelve carucates that was known as the hundred and functioned as an administrative area akin to a modern civil parish.

By 1086 the four manors had passed to different lords. Ivo Taillebois the sheriff, Alfred of Lincoln, and Robert of Stafford were major tenants-in-chief in Lincolnshire; Seuen, by contrast, was an Englishman who managed to hang on to his lands where most of his countrymen were dispossessed. Wulfric was presumably his father. All of their fees can be traced into the 14th century. In most records they are simply identified either as ‘Bourne’ or ‘the Hundred of Bourne’ (the unit survived into the 15th century). Some, however, are more precise. The Pipe Roll of 1167 is the earliest and most eloquent. It records that the sheriff rendered account of 1 mark of the forest pleas of Alan de Neville due from the fee of Hugh Wake in Bourne and Dyke. This is the main manor of Bourne. The next entry, by contrast, concerns ‘1 mark from all the fees of Austerby’. In the 13th century there are references to the Stafford fee ‘in Austerby’ and ‘in the street (vico) called Austerby’ and the mill that belonged to the four fees can be identified from several references to be the East Mill which became known as Notley’s Mill close to Victoria Place. It seems clear that all four manors were actually situated in Austerby in 1086 rather than Bourne.

The name means ‘the settlement to the east’. Today it is used generally of the area to the south-east of Bourne and specifically of the road that runs west-east from South Road to Willoughby Road. The Manor House at the west end of this road is no earlier than the 17th century. Whether it has medieval antecedents is unknown, at least to me. The Old Bakehouse to the east has a better claim to medieval origins. The structure is evidently 16th century  and it was probably the hall of the manor of Bourne Abbotts. This estate was of  later medieval origin – it seems to have been formed in the 14th century – but much of its lands, possibly all, was granted out of the four Austerby fees.

The Old Bakehouse gives a fair idea of the centre of the village. The layout of the streets provides even better clues. If we are looking for a focus of settlement, then it must be Victoria Place. Bounded by Spalding Road to the north, Willoughby Road to the east, and the Bourne Eau to the south, it is the point at which Abbey Road, Spalding Road, East Gate and Willoughby Road meet, and Austerby communicates with it just to the south. The old inn on the north side indicates that the feature dates from at least the 16th century. Situated due east of the Bourne, here is surely the nucleus of the ‘the eastern settlement’.

Although Domesday Book designates the four estates as manors, I suspect that they amounted to little more than farms in 1066. Notionally, each must have had a hall at which dues were rendered. This was the essence of the Domesday manor and service was due in return to a superior lord. In practice, however, the hall could be any structure. In the Boldon Book, an account of the estates of the bishop of Durham in the north, there is a reference to a portable hall. The Austerby fees were all small by south Lincolnshire standards, little more than the holding of one of the more prosperous sokemen, and three out of the four were held by men of their lords in 1086. When they emerge into the light of documented existence in the 13th century, the manors were much sub-enfeoffed, but the sitting tenants were more of yeoman rank than knightly. They were almost certainly small beer in 1086.

Well, I’ve gone rather a long time about the Domesday entries. I think, though, that we now have a clearer picture of Bourne in the middle to late 11th century at the beginning of its recorded history. The tenurial framework is simpler than it at first appears. There is what I shall call the main manor to which is attached an important church. I have suggested that the second manor in Bourne was probably attached to this church. The remaining manors were situated in Austerby. At some time in the recent past they had been constituted as a single estate but by 1066 it had been so subdivided that its constituent elements effectively functioned as farms.

It is de rigeur in these circumstances to give a figure for the Domesday population at this point and I will duly do so. The statistics are summarized in the following table: 

There were a total of 31 recorded individuals in Bourne and 22 in Austerby. Each person is usually held to represent a family, normally considered to average five persons, so we will have a population of 155 and 110 respectively. These figures, however, should be seen as a minimum. Domesday Book records only those individuals who owed service. Not all did. Just over the boundary to the east in Holland, for example, a whole class of sokemen were omitted. The actual population was probably considerably higher.

The selectivity of the Domesday text highlights an important characteristic of society in the 11th century. When we think of the manor we tend a assume that it all belonged to the lord and its inhabitants were little better than slaves. There are elements of this characterization that were to become true by the 13th century. In both 1066 and 1086, however, the inhabitants were still free. Sokemen, as here in Bourne, were free to dispose of their lands, but so too did villeins have a degree of freedom. They were so called because they were men of the villa, that is, the village. They were obliged to work on their lord’s demesne, but in return had a full share in the resources of the vill. It was only bordars who might be unfree, although they were not always so. The point I make here is that society was basically tributary: it was dues of one kind or another that kept it together rather than land. The value of the various manors in Bourne would have included the rents of peasants who are otherwise not noticed.

The economy that Domesday describes reflects this kind of society. Manorial infrastructure is recorded not because it was there but because it contributed to the income of the lord’s demesne, that is his home farm. Unfortunately, we do not have an exhaustive account of livestock in Lincolnshire, as we do across the shire boundary in Norfolk. The data were mostly edited out as irrelevant, leaving only details of plough beasts that can be inferred from the number of ploughs. The most prominent stock is woodland and fisheries and fishponds. Both were important in the fen edge economy of Bourne. What is omitted is as interesting as what is included. The location of the fisheries is unclear, but presumably the ponds were in the vicinity of the two settlements. What is missing is the vast resources of the peat fen to the east. This, of course, does not mean that it was not used. It is known from various pre-Conquest sources that this was an important resource. What it tells us is that the lord did not have exclusive rights to it. The fen had yet to be divided up and drained. It remained a communal resource which was enjoyed by all the men of Bourne and Austerby.

All this – the tributary society and economy – began to change in the fifty years after the Domesday survey. By 1140 Bourne had changed out of all recognition. The early 12th century was a period in which lordship became territorialized. Society became feudal if you like. The change was general, but the transformation of Bourne was facilitated by an expansion of the honour. The details are hazy, but by the 1130s Baldwin fitzGilbert of Clare was heir to not only the land of Ogier the Breton but also the Domesday fees of Godfrey of Cambrai and Baldwin the Fleming. As a younger son on the rise, Baldwin set out to establish his credentials as a big player. The best evidence of his ambition is the foundation of the abbey. This was at once a statement of his wealth and status and signalled his intention to establish a dynasty: every family of note needed a cult centre and a mausoleum. It is likely that it was linked with the construction of the castle.

Now, I know that there has been a considerable amount of debate in Bourne of late as to whether there actually was a castle here. All I can say it that in the medieval period many people thought there was. The first reference occurs in 1180 and we have notices right up into the 16th century. We hear of the eastern bailey, the gatehouse, the chapel and so on. It matters not whether it was called a castrum  or castellum. Now you might complain that the site can never have been defensible or was just a moated manor house, but this misses the point.

Let’s take probably the most iconic of English castles. Bodiam certainly looks the part. But it might as well be a cardboard cut-out for all of its defensive value. It was built half way up a hill and any besiegers just had to slight the dam to let out the moat and walk in. Bodiam was built for show. It was a statement of status. So was Bourne castle. Whether it worked as a serious fortress was a secondary matter. 

The real problem is the date of the castle. As a motte and bailey, it could just as easily date from the late 11th century as the early twelfth. Did Ogier build it, then? Without archaeological investigation there is, of course, no way of knowing short of a cache of new documents coming to light. But I suspect not. With a total income of £28 pounds, it is unlikely that Ogier had the resources. In fact, it was probably not until the barony of Bourne was joined to the fess of Godfrey de Cambrai and Baldwin the Fleming in the hands of Baldwin fitzGilbert that the lord of Bourne could afford it. I shall stick with the received wisdom here. A younger son on the rise in the early 12th century needed to announce his arrival. The castle was as important a signal as the abbey.

What is perhaps clearer is that the construction of the castle saw a remodelling of the town. We have no documentary evidence to illustrate what happened, but the street pattern of Bourne is eloquent. At first appearances Bourne is a simple crossroads settlement. North Street and South Street are part of the ancient road that linked the fen edge settlements. West Street links to the upland and Abbey Road to the skirt and fen. A closer look, however, reveals some significant alterations at the point at which they intersect. This is most apparent in the line of South Street. Notice how it swings towards the north-west just north of Coggles Causeway before straitening up to enter the market place. Abbey Road from the east does the same. The realignment of West Street is less dramatic but is nevertheless no less apparent. Perhaps even North Street has moved slightly to the west. It would seem that the creation of the market saw a re-routing of the street to run into it.

The market place is evidently a secondary feature of the town plan. Where, then, was the original centre of Bourne? All we have to do to find out is follow the original alignments of the roads. If we extend the line of South Road northwards, it meets with Meadowgate. This road in its turn approximates to the original line of North Street. Likewise the original alignments of West Street and Abbey Road meet. The two axes cross just to the north-east of the church. Here, I would suggest was the centre of Bourne in 1086. This may, incidentally, be a good reason for believing that the site of the manor house was not then on the castle site.

The date of the re-planning is inevitably problematic. You might say that it must follow the grant of a market to Baldwin Wake in 1281. But life is not that simple. A charter does not necessarily date the creation of the market; it may as often merely confirm it. So, 1281 is as likely to be the latest date for the change as the earliest. Indeed, a closer association with the construction of the castle is indicated by the course of West Street. The primary reason why the road was pushed northwards seems to have been to skirt the northern boundary of the castle’s eastern bailey. If the gatehouse was at this end, as the early 19th century plans suggest, then we have the classic pattern of castle and market at its gate.

So, as in so many other places, I am inclined to see the creation of the market as an integral part of the construction of the castle. Was there also a scheme to create a new town? This is precisely what happened at Sleaford at much the same time. There the construction of the castle saw a remodelling of the settlement and the introduction of burgage tenure. The topography of ‘New Sleaford’, as it was called, is strikingly similar to that of Bourne. There is no evidence for burgage tenure here – we know it of Sleaford from only one source – but the tenements either side of North Street certainly look like burgage plots.

I would conclude, then, that the skeleton of modern Bourne was formed in the early 12th century through a radical transformation of the Domesday settlement. The same period also saw a transformation of its society and economy. Work had already begun on the division and drainage of the fen and the lords of Bourne were in the forefront of appropriating common rights to themselves. The foundation of the abbey also began to change the face of tenure. Throughout the 12th and 13th centuries it attracted endowments and, as we have seen, it consolidated these into its own manor in the 14th. But all of that must be another story for another time. Tonight my objective was to unpick the early history of Bourne from the Domesday account of the vill and highlight the changes that were wrought on it in the early 12th century. It was here, after all, that we find the origins of the modern town of Bourne.

NOTE: This is the text of a lecture given by David Roffe, research fellow at the Department of History
at Sheffield University, to Bourne Civic Society on Monday 9th May 2011.