Bourne Eau is a short river which rises from an artesian spring in the town of Bourne in Lincolnshire, England, and flows in an easterly direction to join the River Glen at Tongue End. Within the town, it once powered three water mills, one of which is now a heritage centre. At Eastgate, it becomes much wider as it was navigable in the 18th and 19th centuries, and this was the location of the terminal basin. Below the town it is an embanked river, as its normal level is higher than that of the surrounding Fens. Navigation ceased in the 1860s and the river now forms an important part of the drainage system that enables the surrounding fen land to be used for agriculture.
The artesian spring is fed by a limestone aquifer, which has been extensively used to supply drinking water to the locality and to Spalding. After a period of low rainfall in the late 1980s, the spring and hence the upper river dried up completely. A remediation project was implemented in 1992/93 to repair wild boreholes, where artesian water was uncontrollably running to waste. 30 boreholes were plugged or repaired, and water returned to the spring and river.
The river divides North Fen from South Fen. Both were enclosed in the 1770s, and surplus water from the North Fen was fed to the South Forty-Foot Drain. Steam pumping was introduced in 1845, and the drainage is the responsibility of the Black Sluice Internal Drainage Board (IDB). To drain the South Fen Gilbert Heathcote's tunnel was constructed to take water under the River Glen to the Counter Drain. Various engines were used to pump water through the tunnel, but after the failure of a gas engine in 1942, a new pumping station was built, to pump water into the River Glen. Drainage in the South Fen is now the responsibility of the Welland and Deepings IDB.
Course
The town of Bourne is surrounded by the River Glen. To the west, the East Glen and West Glen flow from north to south, and become one river to the south of the town. They then flow in a north-easterly direction to the east of the town.Ordnance Survey, 1:25,000 map Bourne sits over a layer of Middle Jurassic limestone, some thick, which dips to the east, and is covered by Upper Estuarine mudrocks, which confine groundwater within the limestone layer.
Bourne Eau rises in , otherwise known as St Peter's Pool, in Bourne. The Wellhead is a natural artesian spring, rising from the limestone some below the land surface. It once formed the source of the water defences for Bourne Castle as well as the power for the town's three mills. From the Wellhead, a branch flows to the east, along the southern edge of the castle site, while another flows north, then east and south, enclosing the castle site and Wellhead Gardens to rejoin the first branch near Baldock's Mill. A culvert carries the water under South Street, and it flows along the edge of Church Lane, where it is crossed by a small cast-iron bridge with gates, providing rear access to Bourne Eau House. It carries the date 1832. On the other side of Church Lane is the parish church of St Peter and St Paul, a grade I listed structure that was originally the chapel for an Arrouaisian order of Canons founded in 1138.
At the north end of Church Lane, another culvert takes it under the gardens of the vicarage. This culvert and the South Street culvert are quite old, since they appear on the 1888 Ordnance Survey map. When the river resurfaces, if turns to the south, running behind the church building and then to the east along the back of gardens belonging to houses on Coggles Causeway. A lengthy culvert carries it under the Abbey Lawn complex and Victoria Place. This culvert is more recent, as it was built in the 1960s when the recreation ground became the Abbey Lawn sports complex. Before the culvert was built, the railway line to crossed the river near to where the culvert starts.Ordnance Survey, 1:10,560 map 1959 and 1:2,500 map 1970 It passes under Queen's Bridge, and then runs parallel to Eastgate. Half way along Eastgate, the channel becomes much wider, where it formed the terminal basin for the Bourne Eau when it was navigable. The Roman Car Dyke, now reused as a drainage channel, originally ran though the town, passing along the west side of Queen's Bridge, but a modern channel joins the southern section to the basin, on the north bank of which is the Anchor Inn, a small grade II listed public house dating from the 18th century. The A151 Cherry Holt Road crosses the waterway at May's Sluice, and then it enters South Fen, where it is joined by another channel linking to the Car Dyke on its north bank. Below the junction its flow is supplemented by the treated outfall from Bourne sewage treatment works. The river is embanked on both sides, and there are low level catchwater drains running parallel to the banks. A bridge carried the railway to over the river.
The present course enters the River Glen at , a name which derives from the low tongue of land within the enclosing banks of the rivers.
Apart from the spring, most of the water of the river is collected by the Car Dyke, which, near Bourne, is arranged to act as a catchwater drain, gathering the surface water of the upland and feeding it via the Bourne Eau and River Glen to the sea, without its entering The Fens.
History
The course of the river through South Fen is clearly manmade, as the river is above the level of the surrounding land, but there is no known documentary evidence as to when this was first carried out. In the 13th century it was called Bourne Ald Ea or Brunne Ea, and the Commission of Sewers issued an order that it should be raised and scoured by the people of Bourne. Work on the north bank was to extend as far as Goderam's Cote, and on the south bank to Merehirne. Another order was made in 1376, that the Brunne Ald Ea was to be repaired, raised and cleansed, but this time the responsibility for the work was shared between the town and the Abbot of Brunne. Later an order required that the banks be made thick and raised by an extra .
Documentary evidence for the use of the Bourne Eau is quite scant, but in the 16th century Bourne was a market town, and it is probable that the river enabled the corn trade to flourish. In 1765, there was serious flooding in the area, following the failure of the banks of both the Bourne Eau and the River Glen. As a result, the north bank of the river became the responsibility of the Black Sluice Commissioners, a body which was created by an Act of Parliament, to construct the Black Sluice where the South Forty-Foot Drain entered The Haven at Boston, and to supervise the drainage of the Fens feeding that system. The north bank was a serious problem, as it was built on a peat subsoil, and defied attempts to raise it, with the result that the Bourne Fens often flooded.
Improvements to the of river from the River Glen junction to the town of Bourne were authorised by an act of Parliament, the (21 Geo. 3. c. 22), obtained on 29 March 1781, which suggested that the river had previously been navigable, but had become choked with mud. The act created a body of 12 trustees, who were empowered to maintain a channel which was wide by deep. They could charge tolls on all boats using the navigation, on which the main merchandise was coal and wool, which were shipped to Boston for onward transmission to the north east. Return trips brought coal and groceries to the town, and a coal wharf was erected on Eastgate during the early years of the 19th century. There was also some trade with Spalding, including a regular service to take people and goods to Spalding market every Tuesday, but Thomas Hawkes noted in 1792 that the service was a little intermittent, as there was often too little or too much water in the river. Investigation showed that the river levels rose by for every quarter of an inch (6 mm) of rainfall in the River Glen catchment. The navigation included two locks, one near the junction with the Glen, and the other near Bourne.
In order to ease the problems caused by the north bank, the Black Sluice Commissioners negotiated with the Trustees to allow them to build a set of self-acting flood gates at Tongue End, where the river joined the Glen, and an overfall weir, which allowed surplus water to flow over the bank and into the Weir Dyke in Bourne Fen. The self-acting doors prevented high water levels in the Glen from flooding back up the Bourne Eau, and it improved navigation for a time, but competition from the railway saw traffic decline. A railway from Boston to Spalding opened in 1848, with a branch from Spalding to Bourne completed in 1866. A link from Bourne to Sleaford followed in 1872. By 1857, boats using the navigation only do so occasionally, and the self-acting doors were replaced by a sluice in the 1860s, which effectively brought navigation to an end. The Bourne Eau Act was repealed in 1962, removing the right of navigation, and the sluice was replaced by a pumping station in 1966, which removed the need for the overfall weir.
Milling The river has been used to power mills since at least 1086, when the Domesday Book recorded three mills in the village. There were three mills in the late 1800s, all of which were marked as corn mills on the 1888 map. Cliffe's or West Street Mill was on the stream that ran around the northern edge of the castle site, was at times used for grinding bark for use in the tanning industry. It was demolished in 1910. Baldock's Mill was located where the streams left the castle site, on the western side of South Street, while Notley's Mill was a flour mill, and was located on the west side of Victoria Place, close to Eastgate. It survived until 1973.
Baldock's Mill still exists, and has been repurposed as a heritage centre. The present building was constructed in 1800, and the mill was operated for two three-hour periods each day. This was subsequently increased, by digging a new channel, and was later supplemented by a gas engine. The mill had two water wheels, one make of timber which was in diameter by wide, and a second metal wheel which was by . The mill produced animal feed from corn and maize, and was used commercially in 1920, when the miller was Mr Baldock. The building was grade II listed in 1973, and initial restoration work was carried out by pupils from Bourne Secondary School, the Robert Manning Technology College (now known as Bourne Academy). It is owned by Bourne United Charities, but has been leased to the Civic Society since 1983, who have gradually turned it into a heritage centre, celebrating the town and the lives of some of its residents. In 2002, the Civic Society decided to restore the wheels. The large wheel could not be rebuilt to its full size, due to modifications made to the building to make it suitable for public use, but the small wheel is operational, and drives a generator, which powers the heating system for the centre.
Water abstraction A major component of the flow in the Bourne Eau is from the spring at St Peters Pool. Historically this produced some per day, and was of sufficient purity that it was bottled and sold as mineral water in the late Victorian period. The flow has since reduced, resulting in the river being smaller than it was. Anglian Water have two boreholes near the junction of Abbey Road and Manning Road, which are authorised to abstract up to 25 Mld (megalitres per day), although they normally abstract around 16 Mld. The water is oxygenated, chlorinated to disinfect it, and checked for clarity. It is then pumped into the public supply network, most of it passing along an pipeline to Spalding Tower. Water for Spalding has been obtained from the aquifer below Bourne since 1894, when the first borehole was drilled to a depth of . Boreholes proliferated, and there were about 130 around the town by 1969. Most of these have since been sealed up, and only Anglian Water operates boreholes within the town.