Housing

The older domestic properties in Bourne were built mainly during the 18th and 19th centuries, replacing homes that were lost by two big fires that caused widespread damage in the early 17th century. In the summer of 1605 and again in 1637, many houses were engulfed in the vicinity of the Red Hall, in Manor Street and later in Eastgate on the other side of the town where the cottages of many workers employed in the pottery industry were destroyed. 

Others have been pulled down to make way for new developments and so many historic homes have been lost such as a 16th century thatched cottage at No 15 Bedehouse Bank. It was made from mud and wattle, a building method rare in Lincolnshire, and so the property was unique to Bourne where it had been in continuous use for more than 250 years but when it became vacant it was thought to be uninhabitable and had failed to find a buyer. Experts insisted that the cottage was sufficiently rare to be preserved, perhaps as a museum, but costs were said to be prohibitive and the owners sought permission to pull it down and despite being a listed building, it was demolished in 1980 after a public inquiry when objections by the Ancient Monuments Society and other conservation organisations were overruled. Many old properties have suffered a similar fate in the name of progress. The result is that most of our old buildings are either Regency or Victorian, built in brick, stone and slate, but are no less interesting for that.

Old cottages can still be found in Bourne, usually greatly altered in appearance and construction, but a row of mud and stud cottages survive at Numbers 25 and 27 Spalding Road (pictured above). They are at least 300 years old and although the original walls survive, they have been reinforced with stone. They look incongruous with their red brick chimneys, dormer windows, ashlar quoins and a white-washed exterior, and were originally three farm workers' cottages but their age is undisputed. They are now converted into two homes and their snug interiors command such a loyalty with the tenants that one, Mrs Nancy Scott, a widow of 65, has lived there since 1957 and is reluctant to move into a modern bungalow with all modern conveniences.

To understand what a town looked like in past times you only need to walk the main streets glancing upwards, a somewhat hazardous pursuit in view of the hurrying crowds and passing traffic and so you must stop to investigate every few yards. What you will see above the shop fronts are the facades as they were before commerce invaded our town centres and turned once historic buildings into everlasting eyesores. If you wanted a view of North Street, for instance, as it was in the early part of the last century, then imagine a panoramic photograph showing only the upper storeys of each building and excluding the ground floors and it would appear as though time had stood still. There are cables strewn across many frontages, and West Street has several such unsightly examples, but by and large, the upper parts of the buildings have been untouched and still evoke the architecture of past times. Compare these top storeys with old photographs of the town and you will have a taste of what Bourne once looked like. 

The invasion of the shop front into former residential areas is particularly evident in the big cities and there are many places in London, for instance, where whole rows of houses have been ripped apart in the pursuit of profit. Streets of once attractive Georgian and Victorian residences have been commercially vandalised with the addition of garish frontages that become even more unsightly each time they change hands with the addition of plastic shop titles and illuminated advertising signs. Stringent town planning laws did not become effective in Britain until after the Second World War but by then it was too late to stop this insidious invasion of the shop front that has blighted so many areas of the inner cities that were once delightful places to live in and it is only in recent years that we have started to reverse the trend by building retail centres and supermarkets on their own sites and away from those areas where we live. One stop shopping is both convenient and essential but this should not mean an end to our town centres that can supplement this mass retail activity with the sale of specialist goods and services. The buildings from which they operate however must be attractively maintained and complacency will lead to neglect that will merely exacerbate the problems that we have experienced here in Bourne in recent years. 

Numbers 13-15 Meadowgate, dated 1899 (left), and a pair of houses in Abbey Road known as Cambridge Villas with a stone plaque on the front bearing the date 1895 and the initials J.F.

Stone was the most durable material for house building in times past but is now no longer economical although there is an example of what they looked like in the row of stone cottages on the north side of West Street. But red brick appears to be the dominant building material that identifies Bourne with its immediate past and these were manufactured locally when stone was no longer readily available. There were several brick manufacturing yards in or near Bourne where this work was carried out to keep pace with demand but they have long since disappeared. The South Lincolnshire Brick and Tile Company Limited had its works in West Road at the turn of the century and another place where clay was obtained for brick making lay immediately to the north in what is now Stanley Street. There is also mention in the manorial records of a brickyard on land to the north of Bourne. Similarly, there was another thriving industry at Castle Bytham and the distinctive yellow bricks they produced are evident in many of our buildings, particularly around the town centre and in the Austerby.

Buildings gabled in the Dutch style are a feature throughout the Lincolnshire fens and many examples survive in Bourne, among them a large commercial and residential property in Abbey Road that was formerly the Light Dragoon Inn and built in 1904. The monogram of the brewery, Mitchell & Butlers, can still be seen in the coloured glass lights over the side door. In the 16th century, the gables were crow-stepped and not with sloping sides, and later they were separated by curves. The Dutch influence in Lincolnshire building styles arose from trading links over the centuries and there is a delightful, but modern, example of this style to be found in a large and imposing house in North Road. 

The red brick that is seen so frequently in and around Bourne is used to its best effect in terraced houses such as those in Harrington Street and in West Street where there is a row of five with blue slate roofs that were built in 1872, probably as an investment to produce a regular income from the rents, by William A Pochin, who from 1844 to 1901, was Lord of the Manor of Bourne Abbots, one of the two manors into which Bourne was divided in mediaeval times, Bourne Abbots most likely deriving its name from the foundation of the abbey in 1138. Mr Pochin insisted that his initials be included on the date stone at the front of the terrace that he called Acacia Villas, a popular name for residential developments of the period to give an impression of comfort and gentility, although the inscription has been worn away by more than a century of wind and rain. There are many other examples of red brick houses that survive and are still an attractive part of the street scene.

The town's modern outlook to the west and east is a direct result of the housing booms after the First and Second World Wars when hundreds of council and private houses were built, literally doubling the size of the town while new residential developments in the south will have a similar impact into the 21st century. The building of council houses by the local authority has been a major factor in the expansion of Bourne since 1900 and nowhere is this activity better illustrated than in the Harrington Street area. Between the wars, a considerable number of these properties were erected on the eastern side of the town, both houses and bungalows. Part of the old Meadowgate Road, now called Manning Road, was developed in 1914 and 1919 and Alexandra Terraces were created between 1924 and 1925. Recreation Road received 42 council houses in a single year, 1928, and between then and 1930, a further 48 properties were erected in George Street.

Harrington Street was named after Robert Harrington, the town's 17th century benefactor, and developed between 1936 and 1937 with a total of 44 houses and ten bungalows, all of which are in use today. Then soon after the end of the Second World War, building started again with the creation of additional streets and roads. Harrington Street was further extended between 1947 and 1950 with a different style of council housing while 70 more houses appeared in Ancaster Road. Queen's Road was established with Edinburgh Crescent adjoining in 1953, the year that Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in the company of her consort, the Duke of Edinburgh, and so the two names reflected this national celebration. This residential area was built on farmland to the north east of Bourne as part of the housing boom following the Second World War that brought extra streets and roads to this part of the town and by 1960, 118 council houses, bungalows and flats were built in these two roads while Kingsway appeared a few years later.

By 1969, there were 2,048 domestic properties in Bourne and 597 were owned by the urban district council and included houses, bungalows and flats, some built on the sites of old demolished buildings scattered around the town. The council boasted in its official town guide for that year: "Much private development is also in progress which suggests that people wish to live in Bourne. The housing, private and council, makes an attractive whole in which anyone may be encouraged to reside."

The council houses of past years were originally designed as accommodation for the working classes and have been built by local authorities for more than a hundred years. Intensive building programmes during that period, especially in the years following the two world wars, has left most localities with a row of these distinctive houses, constructed to a simple and similar design, but providing rented homes and gardens for families of modest means. 

Housing from the 19th and 20th centuries along North Road (above) with Alexandra Terraces (below), built on the eastern side of Bourne in 1924-25 as council houses and still in use today although many are now privately owned.

The Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher changed the perception of the council house when their Housing Act of 1985 included a statutory Right to Buy entitlement, introduced to encourage home ownership, and this enabled thousands of sitting tenants purchase the properties in which they lived at discount prices. As owner-occupiers, they could then change the appearance of their homes to suit their own tastes and these changes invariably started with a new front door, a feature that today distinguishes the house that is now privately owned from that which is still rented and is much in evidence today in Harrington Street. 

New building activity during the first half of the 20th century altered the appearance of the town more rapidly than at any other time in its history. For example, in the years between 1914 and 1970, Bourne Urban District Council alone erected 546 houses, bungalows and flats, while during the same period, there was extensive private residential development on the west side of the town, stretching out from St Gilbert's Road towards Bourne Woods on either side of the westward curving Beech Avenue, which is just under one mile in length, making it the longest of the recently built new roads with other streets feeding off on both sides, all appropriately named after woodland trees. This brings into perspective the new housing development now underway to the south of the town alongside the A15 where the latest phase, the Elsea Wood estate, will add a further 2,000 new private homes over the next two decades although the difference today is that the homes being built are purely speculative for private sale and mostly to newcomers moving into the area. 

By 2006, there were 535 council houses and maisonettes in Bourne, all administered by South Kesteven District Council which took over from Bourne Urban District Council under the local government reorganisation of 1974. During the year, the authority mounted a massive publicity campaign to persuade tenants that they would be better off under a new landlord, South Lincolnshire Homes, a housing association specially formed for the purpose.

The idea was to sell off the properties at well below market prices which would then shift the responsibility of bringing them up to the government’s Decent Homes Standard over the following five years to the new association. After a lengthy campaign that included road shows, glossy brochures and even a DVD, all of the council's 6,300 tenants throughout the district were asked to vote which landlord they preferred but a staggering 73% of tenants came out against the proposed sale of council houses to the new housing association. The result of the four-week postal ballot costing £600,000 was therefore a resounding rejection of the transfer that would have ended a century-old tradition of council house provision for the less well off.

MORE BOURNE HOUSING

A modern housing development in Stephenson Way, built to the east of the town circa 1976 (above), and twenty years later (below).

Opened in on land between Northfields and Stephenson Way when the estate was built forty years ago, this play area is now infrequently used and poorly maintained yet the gaily painted railings and recreational equipment remain as a reminder of the demands of local authorities and the good intentions of developers in providing facilities for home buyers.

Probably the shortest through road in Bourne is Hereward Street, a one-way street to Abbey Road with a terraced row of nine cottages on the west side, once privately owned and rented out but now all owner occupied.

St Paul's Gardens in 2006.

REVISED NOVEMBER 2010

See also   Beech Avenue   Mill Drove    Harrington Street   The Terrace

Woodview    Elsea Park     Hereward Meadow     The old laundry site

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