Keeping Bourne attractive

When Bourne was clean and smart

Bourne was judged to be the best kept small town in the Kesteven area of Lincolnshire in 1965 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 Bourne Urban District Council on Tuesday 14th December 1965 by Mrs Philip Welby-Everard, representing the executive committee of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, accompanied by Major W B O Prosser, secretary of the Kesteven Community Council. Mrs Welby-Everard, who was also one of the competition judges, 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 plaque to mark Bourne's success in 1965 soon became badly neglected and lying in a flower border choked with weeds and dead leaves.
See box below.

The cherry tree flowers still and the small plaque nearby reminds us of this success and of those days when Bourne was a town of which we could be justly proud. Councillor Grummitt, who was also a magistrate, was chairman of Bourne Urban District Council twice, from 1954-55 and again from 1965-66.

Town competition sign

Tree planting in 1965

Those pictured at the tree planting ceremony in the picture above are (left to right) Councillor J K Mason (chairman of Bourne United Charities), Councillor Grummitt, Mr F Mason (Clerk to the Council), Mr F Parker (deputy clerk to Bourne United Charities), Mr N Buckle (Surveyor and Chief Public Health Inspector).

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.

Photographed in 1978

Photographed in August 2011

Councillor John Smith, Mayor of Bourne, planting a lime tree in 1979, a tree that had grown to well over thirty feet by 2011. Also present were the mayoress, his wife Judy (on the right), and Councillor Lloyd Ramsden, chairman of South Kesteven District Council, holding the tree, together with other councillors and officials. Councillor Ramsden also planted a mulberry tree nearby, financed by the Bourne committee that had organised Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee celebrations the previous year.

ABBEY LAWN REFURBISHMENT

The entire garden area immediately behind the Abbey Road fencing was refurbished during the summer of 2009 by volunteers from the Bourne Green Gym project and the CPRE plaque was also restored and given a place of prominence.