Bourne, Lincolnshire

History

The fenland area east of Bourne is reputedly the birth area of Hereward the Wake, although the ancient sources are not precise enough to pin his birthplace to a particular town or hamlet. The writer Charles Kingsley vividly describes the fenland east of Bourne in his novel Hereward, the Last of the English.

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Bourne Abbey, established 1138, formerly held and maintained all the fenland east of Bourne under the name of 'Bourne Abbots'. The area appears to have appropriated by the Abbey, or else been given by Baldwin Fitzgilbert, during the 12th and 13th centuries. Possibly the area around Twenty was was acquired under the Abbott David from 1156, as fisheries in the 'Bourne marsh'. No record of how the fens were reclaimed is known, but the Abbey probably sub-let large areas in return for a smaller grant of land once the process had finished. The Abbey was run by an Arrouaisian sect of the Augustinian order.

Related Topics:
Bourne Abbey - 1138 - Twenty - 1156 - Arrouaisian - Augustinian

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There is a tradition that Bourne once had a castle but the evidence is flimsy because it was not mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and is not recorded in subsequent documentation of castles built in England after the Norman Conquest. Hills and other undulations in the Wellhead Gardens, the town?s park, have been taken to indicate a battlemented fortification but there have been no serious attempts at excavation and recent digs that have claimed to have found evidence were little more than the laying of cables and drainage pipes. Historians in the early 20th century claimed that excavations in 1861 unearthed evidence of a castle but recent research has revealed that this was not a serious attempt at archaeology, merely a few men with shovels lifting off the top soil as a side or entertainment for the annual meeting of the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural Society whose members were anxious to see something but a flavour of the occasion can be gleaned by the fact that visitors were entertained by a brass band. The existence of a castle therefore relies on assumption and opinion instead of evidence and excavation. There may be stonework beneath the surface of the Wellhead Gardens but it is more likely to be that from dwellings and other buildings that comprised the settlement that sprang up around the source of water at St Peter's Pool rather than a battlemented fortification.

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Sugar beet was first successfully raised in the fenland east of Bourne, after trials elsewhere in the country had proved unsuccessful, by British Sugar Ltd. Although Britain's ravenous 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 World War I & World War II.

Related Topics:
Sugar beet - British Sugar - Twenty - World War I - World War II

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Bourne is renowned in motorsport circles as the town in which two famous racing car marques, ERA and BRM, were founded.

Related Topics:
Motorsport - ERA - BRM

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