Registered Charity 1141043

Bourne Preservation Society

The society continues to be the membership part of the group. All those of you who are members, are members of the Society, and the society will continue to be involved in everything that is and was intended. The society is managed by a committee of up to twelve members.

We submitted a detailed amendment to the town Conservation Plan, which is currently being revised by South Kesteven District Council. We also take an active interest in the town centre improvement plans. We get involved with other planning applications, for example discussing items with the developers of the housing development on North Road.

The society has monthly member nights, at which there is either a speaker, an event, or a trip to somewhere interesting. Our member night are not just about history or architecture, in fact few are, they are mostly general interest presentations by interesting people or bodies of a wide and varied nature..

We will also continue to involve the public in learning and understanding more about our town and the surrounding area. We do this by holding organised walks, meeting the public at our three monthly stall on Bourne Thursday market, and by producing interesting publications about our town.

You will see on the front page that we have adopted  two of the towns planters, those in West Street, helping to brighten, and provide a well cared for environment in our town.

The Society also works with Heritage Lincolnshire as part of the Heritage at Risk project, where four members are Heritage Stewards. We have also held a jointly organised town walk, which was very well supported.

If you have an interest in any aspect of our town, or any of the surrounding villages, that you would like the society to be involved in, please get in touch with us using the contact information on this website.

Bourne Preservation Trust

We now have BOURNE PRESERVATION TRUST as the second part of our organisation. The Trust is a private limited company, limited by guarantee, which is registered as a charity. The Trust is managed by  six Trustees who are also members of the Society. The Trust will be operated as, what is referred to, as a ‘revolving buildings preservation trust’, a mouthful I know, but basically the Trust will be responsible for the restoration and re-use of historic buildings that we take control of, for the purposes of saving them, or just finding a new use for them. The Trust is also a member of The UK Association of Preservation Trusts.

Currently our first project is the town’s Victorian cemetery chapel, for which you can find detail elsewhere on this site. Future plans exist to restore and re-open another historic building in the town, the Old Grammar School, currently unused and badly in need of restoration.

The function of the building preservation trust is simply to restore and find new uses for historic buildings, we also are tasked with publicising the restored buildings and informing the general public of the buildings history, and the restoration process. We will do this by engaging with the townspeople in similar ways to the Society, also involving local schools in the Victorian nature of our buildings by encouraging project work, painting competitions, etc.

If you are interested in finding out more about the Trust, please get in touch using the contact information on this website.