Twenty, Lincolnshire
Twenty is a small, somewhat remote
hamlet with an unusual name, 4 miles (6 km) east of the market town of
Bourne, (between Bourne and
Spalding) in
Lincolnshire,
England, at National Grid reference TF153207, . Agriculture is the major industry.
It is situated on the
A151 road, possibly originally a
Roman road or
Norman causeway, a road today notable for the very deep
drainage dyke that runs alongside it.
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
levees, 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 re-drained after the seventeenth century
Civil Wars, 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 £0.20 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".
Medieval
According to a
Peterborough 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 rail 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. Though it is possible to speculate on the broad mechanisms, this information is not admissible under Wikipedia rules. The Abbey was governed by the
Arrouaisian Rule, which had been derived from the
Augustinian. The distinction became progressively less discernible over the years.
Seventeenth century
The Twenty Foot Drain was a main part of
Robert Bertie, Earl of Lindsey's 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 twentieth 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
1826/7.
In the Lindsey Level system, the Twenty Foot drain ran from south of the site of Twenty Station (TF155197), a couple of degrees west of north to Dowsby Fen. There (TF143290), it swept eastwards to drain to the estuary of the
River Welland, nowadays at TF133316, 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 where its line crosses the South Forty Foot Drain at TF162294 but it is not marked on modern maps), its course in the modern drainage pattern, is now fragmented.
Nineteenth century
Sugar beet (
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 European 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 War I &
World War II.
Twenty had a railway station from
1866 until its closure in
1959 as part of the
Beeching cuts to the national rail network. 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.
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 nineteenth century, the North Fen Drove crossed the seventeenth century Twenty Foot Drain. By that stage, the road gave passage through to Spalding and had been
turnpiked. See
A151 road.
Here, we look again at the old map. Follow the line of Twenty Drove through to Dowsby Fen. Apart from a field's length in Dunsby Fen, field boundaries retain the line of the 1638 Lindsey Level main drain, the Twenty Foot. Follow the bend along Dowsby Drove and cross the modern South Forty Foot drain. The 'Twenty Foot Drain' name is retained here in Gosberton High Fen, where the drain is still in use in 2005.
*
Bourne Wood 6 miles (10 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 trail and
cycle rides had already been introduced in recent decades. Bourne Wood forms part of the 19-mile Bourne Cycle Trail.
* Bourne Heritage Centre, in South Street, is open on weekend and public holiday afternoons and includes exhibits about local characters such as
Hereward the Wake. It also features aspects of the town's past connections with motor racing, haute couture, the railway, agriculture and so on.
*
District Council page on Bourne*
RIGHT click the arrow and select
Open in New Window, then
Great Britain, then
aerial photo.
*Wheeler, W.H.
A History of the Fens of South Lincolnshire, 2nd edn. Boston & London. 1896. Facsimile edn Paul Watkins. Stamford. 1990. ISBN 1 871615 19 4 .
*Ordnance Survey. 1:25 000 First Series. Sheet TF12 (Dowsby). 1955.
*Croft, E.
Lincolnshire Railway Stations. Reflections of a Bygone Age. Nottingham. 1993. ISBN 0 946245 77 0 . (a photo of Twenty Station).
*Dugdale, W.
Imbanking and Draining. 1662. (map of the Lindsey Level).
*Bevis, T.
Hereward and De Gestis Herwardi Saxonis Westrydale Press. March. 1981. (direct translation of the Peterborough monk's work).
*
Sugar Beet: see Discovery and ulterior links.
*
Sugar Beet: slightly fuller history in French: see Histoire and ulterior links (Liens externes).
