Twenty is a small, somewhat remote hamlet with an unusual name, four miles 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 but virtually certainly neither, 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 marshand 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 20 pence 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".

History

According to the 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 looked like losing his inheritance, Hereward used the local terrain - fen and forest, to engage in a vigourous resistance to the Norman conquest. In the year that Twenty 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 innitial 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 nerver 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 work out the broad picture, 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.

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 rail network. The station's main intended 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 siltland. The need to house people engaged in the work associated with this and the local farmers' and landowners' response to the economic opportunity, seem to have been the impetus for founding the hamlet around the then new, Twenty Farm.

The derivation of the name of Twenty has been much speculated about but it seems fairly clear that it arose from its poisition where, in the mid nineteenth century, the North Fen Drove crossed the Twenty Foot Drain. By that stage, the road gave passage through to Spalding and had been turnpiked. The drain had been a main part of Lord Lindsey's drainage scheme, declared complete in 1638 and undone from 1642 onward, during the English First Civil War (1642-46). Lord Lindsey died at Edge Hill (23 October 1642). The imposition of the Lindsey level is typical of the many 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 (on the B1397 where its line crosses the South Forty Foot Drain at TF162294 but not marked on modern maps), its course in the modern drainage pattern, is fragmented.

Nearby attractions

• Bourne Wood (six miles) is five hundred acres 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. It also features aspects of the town's past connections with motor racing, haute couture, the railway, agriculture and so on.

External links

• District Council page on Bourne
• Lincolnshire Life article on the area around Bourne

References

• Wheeler, W.H. A History fo 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).