Twenty, Lincolnshire
Encyclopedia
Twenty is a small, somewhat remote hamlet
, 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the market town
of Bourne
, (between Bourne and Spalding
) in Lincolnshire
, England
. Agriculture
is the major industry.
, possibly originally a Roman road
or Norman
causeway
, a road today notable for the very deep drainage dyke that runs alongside it. Nearby are Guthram Gowt
and West Pinchbeck
. Immediately to the south is the River Glen
.
No separate population statistic is available for Twenty. The best available report lumps together Dyke
, Twenty, South Fen and Spalding Road outside Bourne (South Kesteven 011B) with a total of 1,598, with Dyke being the largest.
Twenty is surrounded by rich land reclaimed from wetland which was formerly fenland
interspersed with marine creeks. It is part of the broad lowland, reclaimed from freshwater fen, marine marshland and creek levee
s, known as the Lincolnshire Fens). It is now some of the richest agricultural silt
(marine) and black (freshwater) land in England, though the oxidation of the humus of the black soil has progressively exposed more of the clay derived from the underlying former salt marsh
. When the Lindsey
level was redrained after the 17th century Civil War
, the new scheme was named the 'Black Sluice Level' after the sluice at Boston
, through which it drained to the sea. Thus, Twenty stands in Bourne North Fen, which is the southern end of the Black Sluice Level.
Several media stunts have associated themselves with the name of the place, in the past few decades; most notably by The Sun newspaper around its 20p price. Its inhabitants too, have a sense of humour. For example, its horizon is as wide as the sea's - so a regulation pattern road sign appeared, declaring that Twenty had been twinned with the Moon
. Across this had been spray-painted the legend - "no atmosphere".
The hamlet has never had a church or a chapel. The nearest would be at West Pinchbeck
, Bourne
or (in the 19th century) Dowsby Fen
.
monk's de Gestis Herwardi Saxonis, Bourne was the boyhood home of Hereward the Wake
. With one or two exceptions, such as where two historical revolts are reported as one, the account can be verified to a surprising degree of probability by comparison with reports from other sources and by correlation of the account's geography with the likely reality in the English Fens and the southern Netherlands
.
When he found that he might lose his inheritance, Hereward used the local terrain, fen and forest, to engage in a vigorous resistance to the Norman conquest. In the same year that Twenty's railway station
opened (1866), the novelist Charles Kingsley
published his famous romance Hereward, the Last of the English (full-text link), in which he vividly describes the Fens as he thought they had been in around 1070. His tale was a rewriting of the Peterborough monk's account, according to the taste of the 1860s. The Fens in general, though not around Twenty in particular, are also described in several modern novels, some of them about Hereward.
In 1138, Bourne was divided into two manors on the foundation of Bourne Abbey
, (charter 1138). Some of the fenland, east of Bourne town, appears to have been allocated to each. The initial endowment of the abbey was made by Baldwin Fitzgilbert de Clare and his wife, but later legacies accumulated during the 12th, 13th and later centuries, though the abbey was never very wealthy. Possibly the Twenty area was acquired under the Abbott David from 1156, as fisheries in the 'Bourne marsh', though the connection of this with the site of the future Twenty is speculative. Limited information on how the Bourne fens were reclaimed in the period before 1630 is known. The abbey was governed by the Arrouaisian Rule, which had been derived from the Augustinian. The distinction became progressively less discernible over the years.
drainage scheme, declared complete in 1638 and undone from 1642 onward, during the First English Civil War
(1642–46). The Earl died at Edge Hill
(23 October 1642). The imposition of the Lindsey level is typical of the many local grievances which led to that war. The fenmen had their way until the 1765 Act of Parliament
set the Black Sluice scheme into being. The drain was incorporated into this as a less important feature and persisted into the 20th century, though the length at Twenty is now filled in. Its name appears as "Old Twenty Foot Drain" alongside Twenty Drove, in plans in the Exeter Estate book of 1826/27.
In the Lindsey Level system, the Twenty Foot drain ran from south of the site of Twenty station , a couple of degrees west of north to Dowsby Fen. There , it swept eastwards to drain to the estuary of the River Welland
, nowadays at , by way of Gosberton High Fen
, Risegate Eau and Bicker Haven. Its course can still easily be traced though, upstream from the former Dowsby Cross (which stood on the B1397 road where its line crosses the South Forty Foot Drain at but it is not marked on modern maps), its course in the modern drainage pattern, is now fragmented.
(Beta vulgaris) production was first commercially developed in France
, in response to the effect of the blockades on imports from the West Indies during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
with Britain and other countries. Later, beet was raised in the reclaimed fenland east of Bourne, after trials elsewhere in England had proved unsuccessful. Although Britain's ravenous demand for sugar was mostly met by Europe
an beet and West Indian cane sugar imports until shortly after 1900, the successful sugar beet production in areas such as that around Twenty just met the nation's sugar requirements during World Wars I
& II
.
Twenty had a railway station
from 1866 until its closure in 1959 when a large part of the local railway
system was closed. The station's main apparent use was the removal to market of the produce of the black, humic soil which lay between Twenty and Bourne, as well as the less perishable products of the silt land.
The building style of the now demolished Twenty Farm made it appear to have been built just before the railway station opened. The 1892 Ordnance Survey
shows that very little other domestic building had been added to the hamlet after 25 years. The remarkable feature is the administrative nature of the new buildings. To the farm and railway station had been added the police station
and school and that was virtually all. The map also makes it clear that by 1892, the name 'Twenty' had certainly been applied to the hamlet.
. See A151 road
.
as during their times this area was either completely under water or at the very least a watery fen. More likely that the A151 was built during the drainage period or during enclosure of the local land. The Roman boundary was probably formed by the Car Dyke at a time when early land reclamation was in progress. Further land would have been claimed during the Saxon
and medieval periods until the main land drainage schemes of the 17th century.
. They maintain a small electric pumping station to the west of the crossroads, called Twenty Pumping Station.
Hamlet (place)
A hamlet is usually a rural settlement which is too small to be considered a village, though sometimes the word is used for a different sort of community. Historically, when a hamlet became large enough to justify building a church, it was then classified as a village...
, 4 miles (6.4 km) east of the market town
Market town
Market town or market right is a legal term, originating in the medieval period, for a European settlement that has the right to host markets, distinguishing it from a village and city...
of Bourne
Bourne, Lincolnshire
Bourne is a market town and civil parish on the western edge of the Fens, in the District of South Kesteven in southern Lincolnshire, England.-The town:...
, (between Bourne and Spalding
Spalding, Lincolnshire
Spalding is a market town with a population of 30,000 on the River Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. Little London is a hamlet directly south of Spalding on the B1172 road....
) in Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire
Lincolnshire is a county in the east of England. It borders Norfolk to the south east, Cambridgeshire to the south, Rutland to the south west, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire to the west, South Yorkshire to the north west, and the East Riding of Yorkshire to the north. It also borders...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Agriculture
Agriculture
Agriculture is the cultivation of animals, plants, fungi and other life forms for food, fiber, and other products used to sustain life. Agriculture was the key implement in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that nurtured the...
is the major industry.
Location
Twenty is situated on the A151 roadA151 road
The A151 road is relatively minor part of the British road system. It lies entirely in the county of Lincolnshire, England. Its western end lies at coordinates otherwise, 1...
, possibly originally a Roman road
Roman road
The Roman roads were a vital part of the development of the Roman state, from about 500 BC through the expansion during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Roman roads enabled the Romans to move armies and trade goods and to communicate. The Roman road system spanned more than 400,000 km...
or Norman
Norman architecture
About|Romanesque architecture, primarily English|other buildings in Normandy|Architecture of Normandy.File:Durham Cathedral. Nave by James Valentine c.1890.jpg|thumb|200px|The nave of Durham Cathedral demonstrates the characteristic round arched style, though use of shallow pointed arches above the...
causeway
Causeway
In modern usage, a causeway is a road or railway elevated, usually across a broad body of water or wetland.- Etymology :When first used, the word appeared in a form such as “causey way” making clear its derivation from the earlier form “causey”. This word seems to have come from the same source by...
, a road today notable for the very deep drainage dyke that runs alongside it. Nearby are Guthram Gowt
Guthram Gowt
Guthram Gowt is a small settlement between Bourne and Spalding in Lincolnshire, England, at a bend in the River Glen.-The Location:Guthram Gowt is at the southern, upstream end of the South Forty-Foot Drain...
and West Pinchbeck
Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire
Pinchbeck is a village near Spalding in Lincolnshire, England. The name Pinchbeck is derived from either the Old English pinc+bece or pinca+bece ....
. Immediately to the south is the River Glen
River Glen, Lincolnshire
The River Glen is a river in Lincolnshire, England with a short stretch passing through Rutland near Essendine.The river's name appears to derive from a Brythonic Celtic language but there is a strong early English connection.-Naming:...
.
No separate population statistic is available for Twenty. The best available report lumps together Dyke
Dyke, Lincolnshire
Dyke is a hamlet in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies within the civil parish of Bourne.The name Dyke arises from its lying on Car Dyke, a once much larger Roman ditch, which runs along the western edge of The Fens...
, Twenty, South Fen and Spalding Road outside Bourne (South Kesteven 011B) with a total of 1,598, with Dyke being the largest.
Twenty is surrounded by rich land reclaimed from wetland which was formerly fenland
Fenland
Fenland is a local government district in Cambridgeshire, England. Its council is based in March, and covers the neighbouring market towns of Chatteris, Whittlesey, and Wisbech, often called the "capital of the fens"...
interspersed with marine creeks. It is part of the broad lowland, reclaimed from freshwater fen, marine marshland and creek levee
Levee
A levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels...
s, known as the Lincolnshire Fens). It is now some of the richest agricultural silt
Silt
Silt is granular material of a size somewhere between sand and clay whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface water body...
(marine) and black (freshwater) land in England, though the oxidation of the humus of the black soil has progressively exposed more of the clay derived from the underlying former salt marsh
Salt marsh
A salt marsh is an environment in the upper coastal intertidal zone between land and salt water or brackish water, it is dominated by dense stands of halophytic plants such as herbs, grasses, or low shrubs. These plants are terrestrial in origin and are essential to the stability of the salt marsh...
. When the Lindsey
Lindsey
Lindsey was a unit of local government until 1974 in Lincolnshire, England, covering the northern part of the county. The Isle of Axholme, which is on the west side of the River Trent, has normally formed part of it...
level was redrained after the 17th century Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, the new scheme was named the 'Black Sluice Level' after the sluice at Boston
Boston, Lincolnshire
Boston is a town and small port in Lincolnshire, on the east coast of England. It is the largest town of the wider Borough of Boston local government district and had a total population of 55,750 at the 2001 census...
, through which it drained to the sea. Thus, Twenty stands in Bourne North Fen, which is the southern end of the Black Sluice Level.
Several media stunts have associated themselves with the name of the place, in the past few decades; most notably by The Sun newspaper around its 20p price. Its inhabitants too, have a sense of humour. For example, its horizon is as wide as the sea's - so a regulation pattern road sign appeared, declaring that Twenty had been twinned with the Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
. Across this had been spray-painted the legend - "no atmosphere".
The hamlet has never had a church or a chapel. The nearest would be at West Pinchbeck
Pinchbeck
Pinchbeck may refer to:People*Christopher Pinchbeck, English watchmaker who developed the alloy*Daniel Pinchbeck, American author*William Pinchbeck, American pioneerPlacenames*Pinchbeck, Lincolnshire, England*Pinchbeck Engine, A drainage museum nearby...
, Bourne
Bourne
-General:*A winterbourne * Bourne , a surname*The Bourne shell, in Unix*Jason Bourne, a fictional character who is the protagonist of a trilogy of novels by Robert Ludlum and of a film series based on the books*Bourne Co...
or (in the 19th century) Dowsby Fen
Dowsby
Dowsby is a village and civil parish in the South Kesteven district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies on the western edge of The Fens at the junction of the east-west B1397 road and the north-south B1177. It is north-east of Rippingale and just south of Pointon. The civil parish includes the...
.
Medieval
According to a PeterboroughPeterborough
Peterborough is a cathedral city and unitary authority area in the East of England, with an estimated population of in June 2007. For ceremonial purposes it is in the county of Cambridgeshire. Situated north of London, the city stands on the River Nene which flows into the North Sea...
monk's de Gestis Herwardi Saxonis, Bourne was the boyhood home of Hereward the Wake
Hereward the Wake
Hereward the Wake , known in his own times as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile, was an 11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England....
. With one or two exceptions, such as where two historical revolts are reported as one, the account can be verified to a surprising degree of probability by comparison with reports from other sources and by correlation of the account's geography with the likely reality in the English Fens and the southern Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
.
When he found that he might lose his inheritance, Hereward used the local terrain, fen and forest, to engage in a vigorous resistance to the Norman conquest. In the same year that Twenty's railway station
Twenty railway station
Twenty railway station served the village of Twenty, Lincolnshire. It was on the route of the Spalding and Bourne Railway , later part of the Midland and Eastern Railway and then part of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway main line between the Midlands and the Norfolk Coast.-History:The...
opened (1866), the novelist Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley
Charles Kingsley was an English priest of the Church of England, university professor, historian and novelist, particularly associated with the West Country and northeast Hampshire.-Life and character:...
published his famous romance Hereward, the Last of the English (full-text link), in which he vividly describes the Fens as he thought they had been in around 1070. His tale was a rewriting of the Peterborough monk's account, according to the taste of the 1860s. The Fens in general, though not around Twenty in particular, are also described in several modern novels, some of them about Hereward.
In 1138, Bourne was divided into two manors on the foundation of Bourne Abbey
Bourne Abbey
Bourne Abbey and the Parish Church of St. Peter and St. Paul is a scheduled Grade I church in Bourne, Lincolnshire, England. The building remains in parochial use, despite the 16th century Dissolution, as the nave was used by the parish, probably from the time of the foundation of the abbey in...
, (charter 1138). Some of the fenland, east of Bourne town, appears to have been allocated to each. The initial endowment of the abbey was made by Baldwin Fitzgilbert de Clare and his wife, but later legacies accumulated during the 12th, 13th and later centuries, though the abbey was never very wealthy. Possibly the Twenty area was acquired under the Abbott David from 1156, as fisheries in the 'Bourne marsh', though the connection of this with the site of the future Twenty is speculative. Limited information on how the Bourne fens were reclaimed in the period before 1630 is known. The abbey was governed by the Arrouaisian Rule, which had been derived from the Augustinian. The distinction became progressively less discernible over the years.
17th century
The Twenty Foot Drain was a main part of Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey'sRobert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey
Robert Bertie, 1st Earl of Lindsey was an English peer, soldier and courtier.-Early life:...
drainage scheme, declared complete in 1638 and undone from 1642 onward, during the First English Civil War
First English Civil War
The First English Civil War began the series of three wars known as the English Civil War . "The English Civil War" was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations that took place between Parliamentarians and Royalists from 1642 until 1651, and includes the Second English Civil War and...
(1642–46). The Earl died at Edge Hill
Battle of Edgehill
The Battle of Edgehill was the first pitched battle of the First English Civil War. It was fought near Edge Hill and Kineton in southern Warwickshire on Sunday, 23 October 1642....
(23 October 1642). The imposition of the Lindsey level is typical of the many local grievances which led to that war. The fenmen had their way until the 1765 Act of Parliament
Act of Parliament
An Act of Parliament is a statute enacted as primary legislation by a national or sub-national parliament. In the Republic of Ireland the term Act of the Oireachtas is used, and in the United States the term Act of Congress is used.In Commonwealth countries, the term is used both in a narrow...
set the Black Sluice scheme into being. The drain was incorporated into this as a less important feature and persisted into the 20th century, though the length at Twenty is now filled in. Its name appears as "Old Twenty Foot Drain" alongside Twenty Drove, in plans in the Exeter Estate book of 1826/27.
In the Lindsey Level system, the Twenty Foot drain ran from south of the site of Twenty station , a couple of degrees west of north to Dowsby Fen. There , it swept eastwards to drain to the estuary of the River Welland
River Welland
The River Welland is a river in the east of England, some long. It rises in the Hothorpe Hills, at Sibbertoft in Northamptonshire, then flows generally northeast to Market Harborough, Stamford and Spalding, to reach The Wash near Fosdyke. For much of its length it forms the county boundary between...
, nowadays at , by way of Gosberton High Fen
Gosberton
Gosberton is a village and civil parish in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. It lies south-west from Boston, north from Spalding and north-west from Holbeach. The parish includes the hamlets of Gosberton Clough and Gosberton Risegate...
, Risegate Eau and Bicker Haven. Its course can still easily be traced though, upstream from the former Dowsby Cross (which stood on the B1397 road where its line crosses the South Forty Foot Drain at but it is not marked on modern maps), its course in the modern drainage pattern, is now fragmented.
19th and 20h centuries
Sugar beetSugar beet
Sugar beet, a cultivated plant of Beta vulgaris, is a plant whose tuber contains a high concentration of sucrose. It is grown commercially for sugar production. Sugar beets and other B...
(Beta vulgaris) production was first commercially developed in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, in response to the effect of the blockades on imports from the West Indies during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
with Britain and other countries. Later, beet was raised in the reclaimed fenland east of Bourne, after trials elsewhere in England had proved unsuccessful. Although Britain's ravenous demand for sugar was mostly met by Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
an beet and West Indian cane sugar imports until shortly after 1900, the successful sugar beet production in areas such as that around Twenty just met the nation's sugar requirements during World Wars I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
& II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
Twenty had a railway station
Twenty railway station
Twenty railway station served the village of Twenty, Lincolnshire. It was on the route of the Spalding and Bourne Railway , later part of the Midland and Eastern Railway and then part of the Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway main line between the Midlands and the Norfolk Coast.-History:The...
from 1866 until its closure in 1959 when a large part of the local railway
Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway
The Midland and Great Northern Joint Railway, was a joint railway owned by the Midland Railway and the Great Northern Railway in eastern England, affectionately known as the 'Muddle and Get Nowhere' to generations of passengers, enthusiasts, and other users.The main line ran from Peterborough to...
system was closed. The station's main apparent use was the removal to market of the produce of the black, humic soil which lay between Twenty and Bourne, as well as the less perishable products of the silt land.
The building style of the now demolished Twenty Farm made it appear to have been built just before the railway station opened. The 1892 Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey
Ordnance Survey , an executive agency and non-ministerial government department of the Government of the United Kingdom, is the national mapping agency for Great Britain, producing maps of Great Britain , and one of the world's largest producers of maps.The name reflects its creation together with...
shows that very little other domestic building had been added to the hamlet after 25 years. The remarkable feature is the administrative nature of the new buildings. To the farm and railway station had been added the police station
Police station
A police station or station house is a building which serves to accommodate police officers and other members of staff. These buildings often contain offices and accommodation for personnel and vehicles, along with locker rooms, temporary holding cells and interview/interrogation rooms.- Facilities...
and school and that was virtually all. The map also makes it clear that by 1892, the name 'Twenty' had certainly been applied to the hamlet.
Twenty Foot Drain
The derivation of the name of Twenty has been much speculated about but it seems fairly clear that it arose from its position where, in the mid-19th century, the North Fen Drove crossed the 17th century Twenty Foot Drain. By that stage, the road gave passage through to Spalding and had been turnpikedTurnpike trust
Turnpike trusts in the United Kingdom were bodies set up by individual Acts of Parliament, with powers to collect road tolls for maintaining the principal highways in Britain from the 17th but especially during the 18th and 19th centuries...
. See A151 road
A151 road
The A151 road is relatively minor part of the British road system. It lies entirely in the county of Lincolnshire, England. Its western end lies at coordinates otherwise, 1...
.
Roads and boundaries
It is probably unlikely that the A151 was a Roman roadRoman road
The Roman roads were a vital part of the development of the Roman state, from about 500 BC through the expansion during the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. Roman roads enabled the Romans to move armies and trade goods and to communicate. The Roman road system spanned more than 400,000 km...
as during their times this area was either completely under water or at the very least a watery fen. More likely that the A151 was built during the drainage period or during enclosure of the local land. The Roman boundary was probably formed by the Car Dyke at a time when early land reclamation was in progress. Further land would have been claimed during the Saxon
Anglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
and medieval periods until the main land drainage schemes of the 17th century.
Modern drainage
As mentioned above the area falls within the drainage area of the Black Sluice Internal Drainage BoardInternal Drainage Board
An internal drainage board is a type of operating authority which is established in areas of special drainage need in England and Wales with permissive powers to undertake work to secure clean water drainage and water level management within drainage districts...
. They maintain a small electric pumping station to the west of the crossroads, called Twenty Pumping Station.
Nearby attractions
- Bourne WoodsBourne WoodsThe woods near Bourne, Lincolnshire, England. In particular, Bourne Wood.National Grid reference TF0821. Co-ordinates: O°24'W, 52°46'N.Bourne Wood is owned by The Forestry Commission England. It is managed by Forest Enterprise as part of Kesteven Forest...
6 miles (9.7 km) is 500 acres (2 km²) of woodland of primeval origin, though heavily exploited as a valuable resource for hundreds of years and largely replanted with conifers in the years around 1930. Nonetheless, much of the original flora remains and is now being nurtured by the removal of the conifers which are reaching commercial maturity. Features such as a sculpture trailSculpture trailA sculpture trail—sculpture walk - also known as "a culture walk" - is a walkway through open-air galleries of outdoor sculptures along a defined route with sequenced viewings encountered from planned preview and principal sight lines.-Settings:...
and bikeBicycleA bicycle, also known as a bike, pushbike or cycle, is a human-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A person who rides a bicycle is called a cyclist, or bicyclist....
rides had already been introduced in recent decades. Bourne Woods form part of the 19-mile Bourne Cycle Trail. - Baldock's MillBourne Civic SocietyBourne Civic Society is a voluntary organization concerned with the development of the town and community of Bourne, Lincolnshire, England.It was founded in 1977 at a time of a rapid expansion of the town...
, the Heritage Centre, in South Street, Bourne, is open on weekend and public holiday afternoons and includes exhibits about local characters such as Hereward the WakeHereward the WakeHereward the Wake , known in his own times as Hereward the Outlaw or Hereward the Exile, was an 11th-century leader of local resistance to the Norman conquest of England....
. It also features aspects of the town's past connections with motor racing, haute coutureHaute coutureHaute couture refers to the creation of exclusive custom-fitted clothing. Haute couture is made to order for a specific customer, and it is usually made from high-quality, expensive fabric and sewn with extreme attention to detail and finished by the most experienced and capable seamstresses,...
, the railway, agriculture and so on. - Baston Fen nature reserve the southern banks of the River Glen to the west of Tongue EndTongue EndTongue End is a small Lincolnshire village of Victorian redbrick farmworkers' cottages and early 20th century former council houses at . It is located alongside the Counter Drain Between Baston, Bourne, and Pode Hole, spread out along the road...
, are a nature reserve maintained by the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust. Maintained as permanent pasture, it is flooded in winter to attract large numbers of wildfowl. There is an area of Willow Carr, flooded in winter, whose willowWillowWillows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...
s, osiers and alderAlderAlder is the common name of a genus of flowering plants belonging to the birch family . The genus comprises about 30 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, few reaching large size, distributed throughout the North Temperate Zone and in the Americas along the Andes southwards to...
s provide nesting sites for birds, such as tits, finchFinchThe true finches are passerine birds in the family Fringillidae. They are predominantly seed-eating songbirds. Most are native to the Northern Hemisphere, but one subfamily is endemic to the Neotropics, one to the Hawaiian Islands, and one subfamily – monotypic at genus level – is found...
es and warblerWarblerThere are a number of Passeriformes called "warblers". They are not particularly closely related, but share some characteristics, such as being fairly small, vocal and insectivorous....
s. - Thurlby Slipe nature reserve A similar band of wetland maintained by the trust on the northern bank of the Glen, famous for the variety of birds and butterflies.
- The Pinchbeck EnginePinchbeck EngineThe Pinchbeck Engine is a drainage engine, a rotative beam engine built in 1833 to drain Pinchbeck Marsh, to the north of Spalding, Lincolnshire, in England...
includes a museum of land drainage, which is relevant to fen communities like Twenty and nearby Guthram GowtGuthram GowtGuthram Gowt is a small settlement between Bourne and Spalding in Lincolnshire, England, at a bend in the River Glen.-The Location:Guthram Gowt is at the southern, upstream end of the South Forty-Foot Drain...
. - Ayscoughfee HallAyscoughfee HallAyscoughfee Hall is a grade II* listed building, located in central Spalding, Lincolnshire, England, and is a landmark on the fen tour.- History :The house, currently a museum, was built for Richard Ailwyn in the fifteenth century...
in nearby SpaldingSpalding, LincolnshireSpalding is a market town with a population of 30,000 on the River Welland in the South Holland district of Lincolnshire, England. Little London is a hamlet directly south of Spalding on the B1172 road....
contains a fine local museum, with details of the landscape before and after drainage, and with many artifacts showing what life was like in the fens in the past.