Bourne - Tourist Information

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 as people didn’t have dictionaries in those days and
most words 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 4th 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 are clearly seen in the background. The Romans couldn't tolerate the proximity to the substation.

Things went quiet for six hundred years or so, apart from the occasional inconvenience of a Viking massacre or two, 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 the head-butting of arrows, England suddenly had a new French king known as William the Conqueror:
quite what he was known as prior to this is lost in the mists of time. During the process of handing out great tracts of England to
favoured relatives, he gave Bourne to troublesome, remote, family offshoot, the Fitzgilberts, both to fulfil his traditional family duty
and to silence the appalling Mrs Fitzgilbert, who was a rather tiresome, dread-filled nuisance.

The new baron soon set about building a church (a contractual obligation) and imported a tidy order of monks to keep it clean.
After all this expense he didn’t have enough money left to build a castle as planned, so instead, constructed a series of mounds
that sufficiently resembled the ruins of a castle for him to claim on 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 are now known as Bongie Hill... a local term believed to derived from ancient dialect

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?

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