Bourne Archive:
BAEM: Mill Drove
http://boar.org.uk/ghiwxs7BAEM(pic9a.htm Latest edit 8 Feb 2010.
Text, page
and picture ©R.J.PENHEY 2010.
The Bourne Archive Gallery
The Area around Mill Drove, from the
Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.
This is a detail, covering the general area of the Mill
Drove part of Bourne Parish, taken from the Bourne Abbots Estate Map of 1825.
Mill drove runs west
to east across the pre-enclosure open field, Bourne East Field. It joins the
turnpike road, now A15 to Meadow Drove, which runs north and south through the
pre-enclosure Bourne Meadow. Mill Drove gives the appearance of a road laid out
as a result of the agricultural Enclosure Act of 1766 but ridge and furrow shown
by Hayes and Lane (Fig. 83. p. 139) is compliant with it, so it may be older but it
has not the slightly irregular line of even a straight medieval road..
The estate maps of
both the Marquess of Exeter’s estate and the Bourne Abbots estate name it as
Mill Road, a name which will have been appropriate in 1770, when the enclosure
allocations were made as in 1825, Lord Exeter’s windmill stood near it, to the
south and close to its western end. The maps show it as a post mill which was
by this date, old-fashioned. It is therefore quite possible that the mill was
there before the 1770 date of the enclosure allotments, resulting from the 1766
Act of Parliament.
The road joins the
turnpike with Meadow Drove, so providing access to the enclosure plots away
from the margins of the East Field. It joins the turnpike just to the south of
the toll gate so allowing toll-free access to the field from the direction of
Bourne. The road leading eastwards at the eastern edge of the picture is
Gobbold’s Park Drove. It led across the Meadow to Middle Drove, in Gobbold’s
Park. This was a pre-18th century enclosure. The position of the
toll gate thus allowed toll-free access to the northern end of Gobbold’s park
as well.
It is interesting to
observe that the arable East field was laid out without regard to the
pre-existing Car Dyke. Clearly, the nature of the soil at the time this was
done was the overriding consideration. The fen-edge terrace soil was suited to
arable, while the humic, fen soil which will then
have been present, was allotted to the pastoral meadow.
Index of samples from the map More about the East Field More about the windmills Archive Contents