I feel that there are far too many people moving to the Bourne area who know
nothing of local history, and who therefore do not
appreciate the culture and heritage of this ancient little town on the edge
of the fens. If you take the trouble to acquaint yourself
with a little rudimentary knowledge, you will be far better prepared to understand
why there is a reluctance among those born
and bred in the area to see this unique place become just another victim of
planning blight and urban sprawl.
BOURNE
Bourne takes its name from the waters which gush forth from a hole in the ground
that we now know as St. Peter’s pool. The
original spelling was Brunne, which still doesn’t sound much like water, but
people didn’t have dictionaries in those days, and as
most words at this time sounded pretty much like “Ug”, I suppose we really shouldn’t
be too critical. The original spelling has
been appropriated into the language however, as the derived word “brunnian”
is defined in the Oxford English Dictionary as
“ n. a person of a wet disposition”
Some time afterwards, probably measured in years, the Romans accepted the contract
to bring Britain into the fourth century,
by criss-crossing the country with straight roads. This was highly desirable,
as the chariots of the time had notoriously poor
handling qualities, and were wont to go careering off the roads on bends. Stopping
off on their way to Lincoln, a group of these
Italian navvies stopped off at the pool, which was then the major source of
local nightlife, and built a camp just to the west, which
can still be seen to this day. They didn’t stay long though, as they were driven
to distraction by the continual hum from the
nearby electricity substation.
The remains of Bourne Castle can clearly be seen during dry spells. The Romans couldn't tolerate the proximity to the substation.
Things went quiet then for six hundred years or so, save for one or two Viking
massacres, until the French decided to build an
extension and noticed a little lump of land just over the water. Shortly after
this, after an intense period of tapestry knitting and
head-butting of arrows, England suddenly had a new French king known as William
the Conqueror. Quite what he was called
prior to this is lost in the mists of time. After handing out great tracts of
England to his favoured relatives, he gave Bourne to
troublesome, remote family offshoots the Fitzgilberts, both to fulfil his traditional
obligations and to silence the appalling
Mrs Fitzgilbert, who was a dread-filled nuisance.
The new baron soon set about building the obligatory church and imported some
monks to keep it clean. After all this expense
he didn’t have enough money to build a castle, so instead, built a series of
mounds that looked like the ruins of a castle so he
could claim the insurance. Those mounds survive on the castle fields to this
very day, where they have been appropriated by
the youth of the town for ceremonial inebriation and fornication.
The remains of the castle keep on the Wellhead Fields, now known as Bongie Hill... believed to be local dialect word
STAMFORD
Stamford is named after a watersplash across the River Stam, which winds its
way through lush grass water meadows and
ancient car parks. The Stam hasn't always followed its present course, but was
diverted in Roman times to flow under a
conveniently raised section of the A1.
Most of the buildings in Stamford and the surrounding areas were constructed
from the stone of the now depleted limestone hills
that once stretched all the way to the Wash. These were gradually hacked away
by quarrymen throughout the ages, leaving the
wild, flat landscape that we now know as the Fens.
View of Bourne from the east: this used be to mile after mile of limestone hills, until they were all robbed to build Stamford
The Stamford skyline is dominated by magnificent churches, most of which were
apparently built by someone called Norman.
One of the exceptions is the Church of St. Michael, formerly a group of shop
units, but built in the style of Norman to blend in with
the surroundings. These were later converted into a church after the closure
of the gas showrooms proved to be the final straw
during the 1990’s recession. Norman himself was the fattest man in England,
and is buried in the churchyards of St Martin’s,
St Peter’s and St Paul’s.
This used to be a shopping precinct, but was converted into a church when
many of the shops closed due to the recession
There is also a mystical element to Stamford, as some people claim that a line
drawn between all the charity shops, when
viewed from the air, would form the outline of a sort of wriggly worm-like thing.
Spooky eh?