Bourne Services Group

The headquarters of Bourne Services Group in Recreation Road, Bourne

Bourne Services Group owes its origins to Ernest Stroud, an engineer, who moved to the town from Quorn in Leicestershire in the early 1930s and set up the Bourne Hygienic Laundry on a small site at the corner of Manning Road and Recreation Road. Over the past 70 years, the company has changed its name several times to reflect the evolutionary nature of the service sectors in which it operates but still concentrates on what it knows best: washing and cleaning.

The introduction of the domestic washing machine and selective employment tax in the 1960s and 1970s forced the company to look elsewhere for business growth and it was then that a relationship was formed with a Bristol-based company, Brooks, to develop an emerging market in providing a linen hire service to hotels and restaurants. This part of the business trades as Bourne Textile Services and now serves over 350 customers in an area from Brighton to Burton-on-Trent and all points eastwards. Over 650,000 pieces of linen are processed each week and such is the demand that a new laundry is being built off Cherryholt Road to give additional capacity in a still expanding but competitive market.

Eighty thousand garments are handled each week on the Manning Road site by Brooks Bourne Services, a company jointly owned by Brooks Service Group and Bourne Services Group. This processing unit specialises in servicing industry and, especially more recently, the food sector by providing their laundered garments on a rental basis. 

Bourne Contract Support Services also have their head office on the site and were established in 1991 with Mike Taylor, the managing director. The backbone of the company provides cleaning services to the Ministry of Defence and to other large industrial and office premises in East Anglia and the East Midlands employing over 400 staff in the process. 

The Group is still owned and managed by the Stroud family with Ernest Stroud's sons, Basil (now retired) and Stuart (now semi-retired) and his grandsons, Hedley and Norman, all involved in managing and developing the business at some stage over seven decades. 

Bourne Laundry circa 1934
Bourne Laundry pictured circa 1934. The site was previously used as a woodyard by Charles David Whatton, a timber merchant who also ran the sawmills in South Road.

 A NEW WATER BORE FOR THE LAUNDRY

The Bourne Hygienic Laundry Co Ltd had its own borehole at the Manning Road premises but rapid expansion resulted in the firm applying for permission to sink a second borehole although there were objections from the Bourne and Spalding Urban District Councils and Kesteven County Council and so a public inquiry was called for Tuesday 26th April 1960 
Mr Geoffrey Lane, appearing for the company, told the hearing that the laundry had started from humble beginnings in 1932 and now served between 4,000 and 5,000 customers in Spalding, Oakham, Stamford, Bourne and Grantham, as well as the Royal Air Force stations at Wittering, Cottesmore and North Luffenham. It employed 105 people, one twenty-fifth of  the town's working population, and had added extensions costing £3,000 in the past year and other investment amounting to £3,500 on stock was now being planned.
The new borehole was needed because it was not economical to enlarge the diameter of the existing one. The pipe was made of mild steel and would not last indefinitely. To use the public water mains would cost the laundry at least £430 a year, probably nearer £1,000, whereas to sink a new shaft would cause an initial outlay of £600 and cost £10 a year to maintain. The inquiry ended unexpectedly after a ten-minute adjournment during which time agreement was reached that the laundry should have its new borehole provided the old one was closed after three months.

Aerial view in 1965

An aerial view of the premises in Manning Road taken in 1965. At this time, the firm was known as the Bourne Laundry and Cleaning Services Company Limited, employing 108 people with eight large and four small vans. The company had shops in Bourne, Sleaford, two in Peterborough (Broadway and Millfield), Oakham, Stamford, Market Deeping, Whittlesey and Spalding. Welfare of workers was high on the firm's agenda, running a social club with various attractions including an annual dinner dance and children's party, draughts, darts and table tennis competitions and annual outings such as a trip to the Blackpool illuminations.

Council visit in 1969

The chairman of Bourne Urban District Council, Mr John Wright, accompanied by his wife, visited the laundry in 1969 to see some of the latest equipment that had just been installed, and they were shown round by Basil and Stuart Stroud, sons of the firm's founder, Ernest Stroud. At that time, the firm employed more than 600 staff with shops in eight towns in the surrounding district.
 

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