Bourne, Lincolnshire

Typical fenland farmland on the east of town

Sugar beet was first grown as an English crop in the Fenland east of Bourne by British Sugar Ltd. It had been developed in Germany and France in the early 19th century. Although Britain's demand for sugar was mostly fulfilled by European beet imports until shortly after 1900, the successful sugar beet production in areas such as that around Twenty, fulfilled the nation's sugar requirements during the 20th century's two world wars.

Much of Bourne's 19th-century affluence came from the corn-trade boom that followed the mechanisation of fen drainage. The production of wheat is still important. In the 21st century, hydroponic food production plants have been built on the edge of the fen.

Factory buildings in Cherry Holt Road

West Street

Although the Autocast foundry has closed with the shrinkage of the British car industry, there are a number of small machine workshops in the south and east of the town. These include Pilbeam Racing in Graham Hill Way and Trackline International, manufacturers of "crawler undercarriage systems". Bourne has two printing companies and manufacturers of double glazing and fibreglass mouldings.

In the same area are distribution warehouses for a large brewer and general transport and storage companies, and a game merchant operates from one of the smaller factory estates.

As well as town centre shops, there are garden centres in Cherry Holt Road, furniture and decorating shopping in Manning Road, and specialist suppliers of kitchen, decorative, catering and light engineering supplies. Bourne currently has a total of 14 takeaway restaurants.

Bourne has two County Council divisions:

Bourne North and Morton:

• Susan Woolley (Conservative) from 4 May 2017[12]

Bourne South and Thurlby:

• Robert Reid (Conservative) from 4 May 2017[12]

Bourne has three District Council wards, two having two councillors and the new ward, Austerby, having three councillors:

Bourne East:

• Councillor Bob Russell (Conservative)
• Councillor Judy Smith (Conservative)

Bourne West:

• Councillor David Mapp (Conservative)
• Councillor Helen N J Powell (Lincolnshire Independent)

Bourne Austerby:

• Councillor Duncan Ashwell (Conservative)
• Councillor Jane Kingman (Conservative)
• Councillor Robert Reid (Conservative)

Councillor Matthew Lee is the current (May 2017) Leader of South Kesteven District Council.

Bourne Town Hall (1821) by local architect Bryan Browning

Bourne Town Council has two wards which are identical to the South Kesteven District Council wards. Bourne East elects seven councillors to the town council and Bourne West eight.

From 1899 to 1974, Bourne had an urban district council in the former Parts of Kesteven. Under the Local Government Act 1972, Bourne UDC was dissolved into the newly formed South Kesteven district. Urban districts which disappeared in this way formed successor parishes and were given a dispensation to call their "parish" councils "town" councils, with their chairs to be known as mayor. These town councils were allowed to adopt the coat of arms granted to the former UDC.

A Bourne Rural District also existed from 1894 to 1931, when it was abolished to form part of a larger South Kesteven Rural District. The parish of Bourne had formed part of Bourne RD from 1894 to 1899. South Kesteven RDC had its own coat of arms, which disappeared along with that of Kesteven in 1974. Very few copies of either remain in existence.

Since October 1989, Bourne has been twinned with Doudeville, Seine Maritime, France.

Parts of west Bourne are drained by one of two internal drainage boards, The Black Sluice IDB[13] and the Welland and Deepings IDB.[14]

Many houses in Bourne pay additional drainage rates to these authorities. Details of the designated flood risk areas can be found on a number of government web sites.[15][16]

• Bourne Abbey Church of England Academy (primary)
• Bourne Grammar School (secondary, sixth form)
• Bourne Academy formerly Robert Manning Technology College (secondary, sixth form)
• Bourne Westfield Primary Academy (primary)
• Willoughby School (Special Educational needs)
• Bourne Elsea Park Primary Academy (primary)

Car Dyke and modern housing

Built in the 1970s as part of the large expansion of housing to the west of the town, it has been twice enlarged to cope with increasing rolls. It has a current roll of 629.[17] A November 2008 Ofsted inspection accorded the school a Grade 1 (outstanding).[18][19] Some former pupils are scattered worldwide, as far as Australia. The school hosts its own pre-school facility, the Bluebird Pre-school Playgroup.[20] In 2009, the school was an award holder in the schools section of the Clean Air Awards Scheme,[21] under the auspices of Lincolnshire County Council.[22] It was cited as a Flagship School for the Food for Life Partnership 2009–2010, achieving a bronze award,[23] partly for its cookery club.[24] In 2010 it won Best School Garden in the East Midlands and a gold medal with Britain in Bloom. In 2009 the school had won a silver gilt medal in the same competition.[25] This was one of the first schools to be rated as a National Healthy School under the programme of the same name. It has been given the gold award for the quality and range of its sports provision under the Active Mark Scheme.[26] A pupil at the school received The Local's Rose Award in 2009 for caring for his mother during illness.[27] Local respect was demonstrated in 2008 for this school's educational and fundraising work, when its school fete received a flypast by a Spitfire and Dakota.[28] In 2007 and 2008 pupils filled 200 shoe boxes with gifts for needy children under the Operation Christmas Child appeal.[29][30] Pupils continue charity work outside the school; for example a pupil has contributed to the local newspaper's appeal to send gift boxes to military personnel serving abroad.[31]

In line with Bourne's tradition of agriculture and horticulture, and to its site and environment as detailed, the school has gardening clubs and grows its own vegetables.[32] It has organised voluntary pupil maintenance of public flower beds in Bourne since 2009.[33][34] An orchard donated to the school is maintained by pupils with the aim of providing fruit to the school.[35] Besides the Food for Life Partnership award and cookery club mentioned, the pupils cook pancakes for the Pancake Day celebrations.[36][37] The school has a choir that also sings in Bourne Methodist Church.[38] The choir has performed at local public events such as the ignition of the Christmas lights in Bourne in 2007,[39] and charity events such as the 2008 Bourne Round Table dinner for pensioners.[40] As Lincolnshire champions and representative of the East Midlands, the school's rugby team reached the finals of the Tag 2 Twickenham rugby tournament and competed at Rugby School in Warwickshire in 2009.[41] Cycling has been supported with a six-week Go-Ride cycling skills programme held in 2008.[42] Some pupils take part in other sports such as motocross and skateboarding;[43] a pupil asked the council for a local skatepark in 2002; the idea was resurrected by the council in 2010.[44][45] One pupil won three gold medals in the Cambridgeshire Gymnastics floor and vault competition in 2008.[46]

The school was built on the site of Westfield. Between the 9th and 20th centuries, Westfield was a set of three fields arranged and used as an existing medieval agricultural three-field system,[47] which was a form of crop rotation in use from the Middle Ages. It is this site which accounts for the name of the school. The site is close to and associated with Car Dyke,[48] and this may imply a connection between the three-field system and the dyke, involving drainage, irrigation and transport of crops and materials.[49][50][51] The historical association between Westfield and Car Dyke for crop and materials transport is a strong probability because droving roads and the later turnpikes were less viable than waterways until the A151 road was built.[52] In the tradition of UK primary schools, the pupils are taught geography and history in the context of the school's site environment as well as contemporary and worldwide context. That is to say, the school's site and environment directly affects the education of the pupils.[17][35]

The original modern building was created in 1973 by a team of architects in Lincolnshire Council's building department. It was to have been a flat-roofed building.[53][54] Since then, there have been several extensions which are now fused to form a cohesive unit. The most recent two projects on the site were designed by Wilson and Heath of Stamford,[55] who built a covered courtyard and library at the school.[54] This architectural firm has worked on Fishmongers' Hall in London and the University of Exeter, and has won a civic award in Stamford.[56] Two more classrooms and a covered way are now being planned by the school, which is again using the same architects.[57]

West Road

Bourne Market Place is at the crossroads of the A15 road and the B1193. Strictly speaking, it was a staggered pair of T-junctions where the A15 was met by the A151 from Spalding to the east and the B676 from the west (the article A151 road explains) before the B676 was renumbered as an extension of the A151 to Colsterworth. The A151 was diverted from the town centre via Cherry Holt Road and a newly opened relief road in 2005. When the rapid expansion of the town was first proposed in the early 1990s, development was scheduled to the north-east of the town, and part of this would have been a north/south bypass on the A15 under Section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. However, the chosen site was shifted to the south-west of the town, and the proposed by-pass was lost. A large volume of traffic is generated within the town, with the result that the A15 between Bourne and Peterborough is one of the busiest roads in the county, Peterborough is the closest city to Bourne at 16.1 miles. To the west of the town, the A6121 branches from the A151 and takes traffic towards Stamford.

When the relief road opened, the section of the A151 in the town centre was renumbered. However, ever since then, some published road maps are incorrect. The A151 now follows Cherry Holt Road, it no longer continues to the town centre. The only reliable map is the Ordnance Survey: TF1020. The error seems also to affect satellite navigation systems, causing large lorries to attempt a tight corner in the town centre rather than keeping to the correct roads.

There is a bus station at the top of North Street. The town's bus services are provided by the family-owned company Delaine. There is a daily long-distance coach from Grimsby to London Victoria, which stops at Bourne bus station about 11.00. The return journey arrives just after 17.30.

The railways around Bourne and Stamford in 1915

The first local railway was the Earl of Ancaster's estate railway, which ran from the East Coast Main Line at Little Bytham, through the Grimsthorpe estate to Edenham.[58]

Later Bourne had a railway station served by the Bourn and Essendine Railway (old spelling) line from Essendine[59] to Sleaford and by the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway (M&GN) connecting the Midlands to East Anglia.[60] Timetabled passenger services on both lines had ceased by the end of February 1959 and the lines were closed to occasional use by the Beeching Axe. With the exception of Red Hall, the main station buildings were demolished in 1964, a year after the Beeching Report. The main goods shed survived as an unusual edifice: a goods store of wooden construction. The mechanism of the locomotive turntable is now in use in the Wansford depot of the Nene Valley Railway.

The Bourne-Morton Canal or Bourne Old Eau connected the town to the sea in Roman times.

Until the mid-19th century, the present Bourne Eau was capable of carrying commercial boat traffic from the Wash coast and Spalding. This resulted from the investment following the Bourne Navigation Act of 1780. Passage became impossible once the junction of the Eau and the River Glen was converted from gates to a sluice in 1860.

Motor Racing Memorial

The racing-car marques English Racing Automobiles (E.R.A.) and British Racing Motors (BRM) were both founded in Bourne by Raymond Mays, an international racing driver and designer. E.R.A. started in 1934 and BRM's first car was unveiled in 1949 at Folkingham Airfield.

The former ERA and BRM workshops on Spalding road were being used in 2013 as an auction saleroom by Golding, Young and Mawer. They are adjacent to Eastgate House, the Mays' family home in the town's Eastgate.[61] The achievements of Raymond Mays are commemorated in a Memorial Room at the town's Heritage Centre (Baldock's Mill in South Street) where many of his trophies are displayed, having been donated by his PA Trissie Carlton and her daughter Anne Boggitt. The room contains photographs, memorabilia and silverware won by BRM cars and drivers. A collection of BRM cars paraded around the town in August 1999 and a memorial to Raymond Mays was unveiled in South Street in 2003.

In 1975 Mike Pilbeam, BRM's former Chief Designer, set up Pilbeam Racing Designs and achieved success in hillclimbing in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Abbey and Parish Church of Saints Peter and Paul

There are currently 71 listed buildings in the parish of Bourne, the most important being Bourne Abbey and the Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul (1138), which is the only one scheduled Grade I. The others are Grade II, the most colourful being the aptly named Red Hall (c. 1620), finished in red brick with ashlar quoins, many gabled and featuring a fine Tuscan porch. From 1860 to 1959, it was the town's railway station booking office and waiting room. At two stages, in the 1890s and 1960s, it came close to demolition, but the building is now well preserved by Bourne United Charities, whose offices it holds.

Baldock's Mill (1800), once a corn-grinding water mill, together with the miller's house, has been converted by Bourne Civic Society to serve as the town's Heritage Centre. It houses many interesting artefacts, most recently a water-wheel has been installed and a newly created replica of a Charles Frederick Worth dress is on display.

The Baptist Church dates from 1835, but the church itself was established there in the 1640s. This building, the Methodist Church (1841) and the United Reformed Church (1846) are all still in active use.

The Old Grammar School[62] was a red-brick building with a Collyweston roof, built in the 17th century and largely rebuilt in 1738. The school closed in 1904, and the building, which stands in the Abbey churchyard, has since been used for a variety of purposes. The roof was condemned as unsafe in April 2003 but was repaired, although the building is no longer in regular use.

At the cemetery owned and run by the town council is a chapel built in 1855., In recent years, the building has not been used as a chapel, and the fabric has deteriorated. This is attributed to a lack of maintenance by the council due to financial constraints. However, the shallowness of the foundations is said to be the principal cause. The chapel now requires considerable expenditure if it is to survive, but on 23 January 2007 the town council took the decision to demolish it. In 2007, Bourne historian Rex Needle applied for and obtained a Grade II listing from the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which secures the building from demolition for the foreseeable future. In 2008, the effort is now under way to identify a source of funding (estimated around £400,000) to render the building fit for long-term community use.

In July 2008, the Ostler Memorial in the town's cemetery, an ornate Gothic water fountain originally erected in the market place in 1860 to the memory of local benefactor John Lely Ostler (1811–59), but neglected in recent years, was also given Grade II status by the DCMS bringing the total number of listed buildings in Bourne to 71.

Waterway in memorial gardens

Lake in Bourne Woods

• Bourne Wood; 400 acres (2 km²) of woodland which has been a resource since primeval times. There is now a sculpture trail and the wood forms part of the 19-mile Bourne Cycle Trail.
• Grimsthorpe Castle. A landed estate, large country house and tourist attraction. The castle's web site.
• Bowthorpe Oak, A tree old at the time of the Domesday survey. On private land, an admission charge is levied.