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The Bourne Archive
Edward Trollope’s Essay on
From:
Reports and Papers read at
The meetings of the Architectural Societies of the County of York, diocese of
Lincoln, Archdeaconry of Northampton, County of Bedford, Diocese of Worcester
and County of Leicester during the year MDCCCLXI.
General Secretary, Rev.
Edw. Trollope, Leasingham, Sleaford.
This document is one of
several dealing with Bourne
Castle.
It was transcribed from a
book lent by the Willoughby Memorial Library, to the trustees of which I offer
my thanks.
It is
presented here as an historical document so the credibility of what it says
should be assessed. The reliability of an old essay on history is usually best
on points to do with the writer’s own time.
Rev. Edward
Trollope FSA, of Leasingham was assembling a much larger, collection of
reports for the six fairly high-powered societies which jointly, formed the
Associated Architectural Societies. He seems to have written the report of the
activities of the
In the
The relevant drawings
from the report are linked here. The page will open in a new window,
for viewing alongside the text on this page.
From the church 1 the Society’s members and their numerous
friends, preceded by the Rifle Corps band, adjourned to the site of
“A
small mound, the faint traces of an inner and outer moat, and a few crossbow
slits inserted in an adjacent modern building, 2 are now the sole remaining remains of the old
castle of Bourne and its adjuncts; (see ground plan drawn by Mr. James Fowler,
from a survey taken by Mr. R. Parker, of Morton, and
presented to the Society); 3 but these are
still sufficient to invite enquiry as to what was the character of the
stronghold that once rose from this little grassy plain. 4 It is probable that from the attraction of the
stream ever most beautifully flowing from the spring of Peterspool,
or Well-head, the Romans founded a station near this spot, in connexion with
that branch of the Ermin-street running from the great city of Durobrivae to Sleaford, 5 and also with their navigable canal the Car-dike;
a supposition that is strengthened by the fact of a discovery made near this
spot in 1808, consisting of an urn, containing a gold coin of Nero, and others
of the Constantines and Maximian
II, &c. From the same cause we may fairly assume that the Saxon lords of
Bourne manor also settled themselves on this spot. Here, then, we conceive,
lived Morcar, who fell with all his followers at the battle of Threckingham
6
in the year 870; Oslac, who died in the reign of Edgar, 960; Leofric,
the friend and counsellor of the famed abbatial house at Croyland
during the reign of the
Confessor; but, above all, his patriot son Hereward—long the
subject of song at home and abroad—and also his younger brother, whose head was
exposed within Bourne Castle, 7 after he had suffered death at the hands of the Normans. Here
moreover, continued to live the representatives of Hereward (deriving their
name of “Wake” from the appropriate soubriquet given to their ancestor,
indicative of his watchfulness) until at length the elder branch merged into
the royal house of Plantagenet,
one of whom, Thomas Lord Wake, received here king Edward as his guest shortly
after he had ascended the throne.
The
only existing account of the character of the castle is contained in a “MS.
Description of the towns in Kesteven,
by Peake,” 8 whence we gather
that the keep, flanked by four square towers at its angles, stood in the centre
of an artificial mound; this was probably of the usual Norman form, like those
at Rochester, Newcastle, and London; on the summit
were “’trim walks,’ commanding a good view of the fens.” Within were the hall
and principal apartments of the lord of the castle; also, on the south side,
those of the officers and ladies of the household, beneath which were a prison,
a cellar, and a scullery. The keep (marked C on the plan) was surrounded by a
deep moat (G G) crossed by means of a drawbridge, and
protected by a strong gatehouse, (D) terminating with an embattled parapet; and
a massive door within the solid round-headed doorway, eight feet high, gave
access to stone steps leading to the top are also mentioned; also several
“niches” i.e. crossbow slits (see figs. 2 and 3) the exterior stones of
which are now built into the end of an adjacent barn, E, whose materials were
derived from the remains of this gatehouse that once protected the inner bailey
of the castle, B. A second moat, also, marked G G,
defended the outer baily A, which contained about
eight acres of land, and to this was subsequently added another piece of
entrenched ground, at what date we do not know. Cromwell is said to have
destroyed this castle; but when Leland visited it (tem. Hen. 8) scarcely
anything but the earthworks of the castle remained, he saying, “There appear
great ditches, and the dungeon hill of an ancient castle against the west side
of the priory, somewhat distant from it: it belonged to the Lord Wake, and much
service of the Wake fee is done to this castle; and every feodary
knoweth his station and place of service. “Itin., vol. 1., p. 27.—From the site of the castle
Cromwell again is said to have directed the fire of his artillery against the
town, or according to others from the rising ground to the west; but this is
entirely without foundation, although Bourne was burthened
with the maintenance of a garrison that appears to have been quartered on the
castle site from the following memorandum in the parish register:—”Octr. 11th, 1645. The garrison of
On returning to the town, the carriages for conveying the
excursionists to the places named in the programme were in readiness, and at the
appointed time (10.30) a long procession of vehicles left the town. 12
Commentary.
There is a picture
of Edward Trollope on the Society for
Lincolnshire History and Archaeology’s site.
1. ↑ Bourne Abbey.
2. Then known as the Castle Barns, now
usually called the Shippon Barn.
3. Fowler’s plan of the castle
is reminiscent of that in the early nineteenth century (1825) estate record of the Pochin
property of Bourne Abbots and that of the Exeter estate book (c.1826). The larger scale plan of the centre of the
town, which will have been in the latter is now missing so it is no longer
possible to compare it but its remaining plan of the area shows what appears to
be a fore-building of the keep rather than the inner bailey gatehouse, which
was excavated. However, in his plan, Fowler has tried to reconcile the two. The
Parker survey mentioned in the text may have been that in the record of his
estate, centred on Morton. The maps of the three estates look as though they
may have arisen from the same survey and that of the parish, made for the
commissioners of the Enclosure Act of 1766 comes to mind. But the appearance of
that is rather different, not only in showing buildings like the old Town Hall,
which were present in the eighteenth century but gone by 1825, but also in
minor details. Were they directly copied from the Enclosure map, we should be
left with the question of why the ‘fore-building’ alone should be shown in a
map of 1766-70 when it was the gatehouse which was demolished by Lord Exeter,
apparently in ca. 1805 (Moore).
Click on the respective names to see the
castle site as it appears in the estate maps of Bourne Abbots and the Exeter Estate.
It is the parch mark of the gatehouse
which clearly matches the detailed plan in Fowler’s Figure 1. but that of the
fore-building which comes closer to matching the building in his general plan.
On the ground, the site of the inner bailey gatehouse is well outside the line
of the keep moat, while that of the fore-building is within it. The two estate
plans clearly show a building straddling the line of the keep moat and acting
as a terminus for it. Fowler has this building in a similar position but moved
a little westward and detached from the moat so as to bring it closer to
representing the excavated gatehouse of the report. On the ground, the hollow
representing the keep moat ends in what might be interpreted as a building
platform (RJP1) but in Hibbitt’s geophysical
resistance survey (Hibbitt’s figures 4 & 5), it shows only faintly. It
could be that the building in question was a form of barbican, built out from
the fore-building but its present slightness might imply a post-medieval farm
building.
Combining
Trollope’s information with that from Hibbitt’s survey and Cope-Faulkner’s
observations makes clear that the motte site and its vicinity were redeveloped
in the later thirteenth century (RJP3). More space was made around the
entrance to the keep by moving the gatehouse and the southern end of the
curtain westward, into the moat. The earlier curtain was made of pisé, faced
with stone and shows in Hibbitt’s resistance survey only faintly and not at all,
where the stone has been robbed. The ‘building platform’ at the end of the
motte moat coincides with the line of this earlier curtain wall so the lack of
a geophysical feature there is not surprising. Just as the estate maps show,
the motte moat ended and the late thirteenth century fill of the inner bailey
moat between the old pisé wall and the new (ca. 1280), masonry one formed a
causeway.
Unlike the pisé, the masonry work
shows clearly as parch marks when conditions are appropriate. Picture of parch marks.
4. The description
makes it clear that by 1861, all the major demolition had been completed and
that the remains of the inner bailey curtain wall had been used to largely fill
the moat. The plan however, shows the middle bailey moat in the form it took
before the Horse Pool was dug. That development had been made before the
Ordnance Survey map of around 1880 was surveyed.
6. ↑ Trollope’s spelling follows the
pronunciation.
7. The Hereward story (De
Gestis) refers not to
8. ↑ Trollope’s source for this was probably either Moore or Marrat.
9. ↑ This is an abbreviation of the Latin,
videlicet
and in an English text is pronounced ‘that’s to say’ or ‘namely’.
10. The impracticality of this suggestion becomes clear when the
44 foot span is compared with the 30 foot height of the gatehouse and the 8
foot height of the doorway. However, the masonry will have been an abutment for
a probably wooden, bridge of which the gateward end
was a drawbridge. (RJP3)
11.
↑ This is
the width as modified at this point, when the castle was demilitarized (ca.
1280). Generally and in the original
design also here, the inner bailey moat was much wider: up to about 110 feet
(33-34 metres). (This is based on the positions of inner bailey features shown
by Cope-Faulkner’s
section and the outside of the moat as shown by remaining surface features.
RJP3)
12. The two days of
the society’s meeting had begun at nine o’clock with a service in the Bourne
Abbey. Then the castle was visited and the meeting set off at 10.30 for Dunsby, Dowsby,
Sempringham Priory, Billingborough,
Horbling, Threckingham (Threekingham),
Folkingham, Aslackby,
Rippingale, Hacconby and Morton. After
dinner, the evening meeting in Bourne heard polite formalities and a lecture on
Hereward the Wake.
Next day, they went to Thurlby,
Baston, Langtoft, Market Deeping, Northborough, Peakirk, St. Pega’s Chapel, Croyland
(Crowland), Deeping St James and
back to Bourne for dinner, more courtesies and a lecture on Robert de Brunne.
