Abbey Lawn

The Abbey Lawn in Bourne, Lincolnshire, England, is a centrally located space used as the principal recreation ground in the town. The cricket, tennis, bowls, pétanque, and football clubs play their home fixtures here. The hockey club practices here, though it now plays its fixtures on an all-weather pitch elsewhere. "The Lawn" is the site of the Bourne Cricket Club (Lincolnshire) and its associated facilities.[1]

Umpires considering whether to remove the covers on the cricket pitch, Abbey Lawn. 18 June 2011

Origins
BRM day, 7 October 2012
The sports field was host to catering and trade stands marking 50 years since the company won the Formula 1 constructor's championship.[2]

Though all or most of the land once formed part of the estate of the canons of Bourne Abbey and the swimming pool originated as one of their fish ponds, the present form of the Abbey Lawn and its name derive from the 18th century development of a sheep lawn as an adjunct of the house built by George Pochin, the then lord of the manor of Bourne Abbots. His house was on the site of the claustral buildings of the monastic abbey which had been dissolved in 1536. A sheep lawn was among the gentry, the equivalent of an aristocrat's deer park.[3]

While the part of the Abbey Church which had been used by the parish was retained, the buildings formerly used by the canons were demolished wholly or partially except where a current use could be found for them. Much of the site was therefore vacant around the period of landowner prosperity and investment which arose in relation to the agricultural enclosures of the 1766 Act of Parliament which related to most of the parish of Bourne. Pochin's house was known as 'The Abbey' so that the associated sheep lawn was known as the Abbey Lawn. The house was demolished in 1879[4] but the grounds remained and in the 1930s, they were developed for sports, by Bourne United Charities for the benefit of the townspeople.[1]

References
  1. "Centuries of enjoyment for all at the Abbey Lawn". Bourne United Charities. 2010. Archived from the original on 15 August 2013. Retrieved 2 February 2013.
  2. "BRM day". Archived from the original on 21 May 2013. Retrieved 11 March 2013.
  3. "Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825". Archived from the original on 9 March 2012. Retrieved 7 February 2011. (reproduced on Bourne Archive web site)
  4. Birkbeck, J.D. (1976). A History of Bourne. Abbey Road, Bourne: Lanes Newsagent. p. 103.

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