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Recreation Road, BOURNE, PE10 9GD

A newly built terrace off Recreation Road has been named Beryl Mews after the minesweeper adopted by Bourne during the Second World War while nearby is Sellwood Terrace after the naval officer who commanded it. The town raised £54,168 (£1.5 million at today's values) to adopt the ship which survived the war but was sent for scrap in 1963.

The appearance of our town is changing at a greater speed than at any other time in our history as old buildings are pulled down to make way for new residential developments. Some of the most unlikely places are being cleared of once familiar properties to make way for new housing such as here at the old laundry site in Manning Road which is now occupied by a small estate of 47 one, two and three-bedroom properties. See Image

21st century development on the former site of the Bourne Laundry, facing onto Manning Road. (the semi-detached on the corner predated and survived the Laundry) In the distance, on the left, are the 3-storey retirement apartments built on the site of the former Boston Tractors depot.

The old laundry premises in Manning Road were demolished in 2009 to make way for a controversial housing development of 47 homes on a site covering 1¾ acres (0.7 hectares), now complete and fully occupied.

The southern side of Manning Road was a place of small enterprise for much of the 20th century. A collection of lock-up garages, workshops, motor repair sheds, and a dairy were scattered along here. When the northern side of the road housed a vendor of tractors, a telephone exchange, and a laundry, no-one much minded. But two of those have now been redeveloped for 3-story "prestige" redevelopments, and all of the little businesses along here have gone, pending redevelopment. The dairy and wood yard have already been replaced with infill housing, of a very cramped style, and the fabricators and vehicle repairers were turned out just before the economic collapse of 2008 (see Image] and Image] for views from the other frontage of these plots)

These stylished and well built houses, with bay windows and projecting porches, might date from the 1920s or late 1930s in Metropolitan Britain. But in Lincolnshire styles permeated more slowly, so they could be newer. I think they were probably built in the 1950s.

Two oil-driven beam pumps that had been working continuously since their installation in 1922 became redundant with the opening of a new water pumping station at Bourne in 1974, both made by the world famous firm, Tangye Limited of Birmingham. One of them was preserved as a display feature outside Anglian Water’s premises as a monument to the engineering skills of an earlier generation until sold to a private collector from Suffolk in 2009.

The path at the southern edge of the Recreation ground is raised around a foot above the field, which helps enormously in wet weather. These trees enhance the view too.

Former small fabrication works awaiting redevelopment.

This quiet little terrace is almost unknown to most inhabitants of Bourne. The view at the end is of the Recreation Ground in Recreation Road. It is built of the Fletton bricks produced in such large numbers in Peterborough between the 1850s and 1970s.