Mill Drove

Mill Drove

Mill Drove in springtime

One of the most attractive thoroughfares in the town is Mill Drove, built on farmland in the second half of the 20th century when the front gardens of the houses were planted with a variety of trees and shrubs including weeping willow, japonica, forsythia, flowering cherry and magnolia that provide an attractive vista during the spring and summer months to the open fenland beyond.

Until the 19th century, this was little more than a farm track with deep ruts caused by the regular use of wagons and horses but the first road was constructed in 1873. The Vestry Meeting on Friday 24th May instructed the surveyors of highways "to metal and construct a hard road to be called Mill Drove" and the occupiers of the few houses and cottages that did exist were invited to contribute by carting in stone and gravel to assist with the work of levelling the surface.

Since then Mill Drove has been developed as a residential area, and is a quiet and secluded road in a much sought after location and one of the gardens even boasts a huge monkey-puzzle tree that is quite rare. The street originally existed as Mill Road, a name derived from Wherry’s Mill, a four-sailed windmill that stood at the junction with North Road. It was rebuilt in 1832 when the old stone tower was raised to six storeys in height and it continued grinding corn until 1915 when it was struck by lightning and reduced to two storeys. The stump was eventually used as a storeroom by a subsequent owner, the late Mr Tom Jones, farmer and antique dealer, who also utilised the adjoining outbuildings to display his antiques, but the mill remains were eventually demolished and cleared away in June 1994 to make way for a new house.

THE MILL OF MILL DROVE

There was a mill on this site at what is now the junction of Mill Drove with North Road since the earliest times but the original structure was rebuilt as a four-sailed windmill in 1832 when the old stone tower was raised to six storeys in height. It became known as Wherry's Mill and continued grinding corn until 1915 when it was struck by lightning and badly damaged, reducing it to two storeys. The remains of the mill were eventually demolished in 1994 to make way for a housing development. This picture was taken circa 1910 with the mill staff in the foreground and the millstones propped up against the tower on the left for cleaning.

Memories of it, however, survive in the name of the adjoining house, a substantial Victorian property once occupied by Mr Jones and his family, and known today as Mill House but it was sold on his death and in recent years has been used as a bed and breakfast business. There is evidence that a second mill once stood on the south corner of Mill Road because a map from the early 19th century shows this road connecting with the main Peterborough to Lincoln Road, now the A15, "at a place between the windmills". A toll gate also operated at this point on North Road from 1756 until 1882 and there was a toll keeper’s house on the west side of the road with a billboard displaying the different charges for the various classes of road users, 6d, for instance, for a pony and trap.


A handsome mid-20th century house built in 1951 (left) and the old gatekeeper's cottage of 1870 (right)

The surrounding area was mainly agricultural land that was swallowed up by private residential development to meet the demands of the population boom that started after the Second World War and most of the properties in Mill Drove were built from 1968 onwards with the Stephenson Way estate that is attached following in the mid-1970s. Another large estate sprang up during the early 1990s after developers were given permission in 1989 to build 300 new homes on thirty acres of agricultural land on the eastern end into the fen as far as the Car Dyke where the streets have been named after Second World War locations including the Battle of Arnhem in 1944 and the Burma campaign. The buyers here included a large number of retired people from the south east anxious to escape from escalating property prices in the London area.

Poppies colonise the Mill Drove development in the late 1990s (left) and this is the scene

today (right), the streets on the new estates being named after locations from the Burma

campaign during the Second World War and the Battle of Arnhem in 1944

When Mill Drove was merely a stretch of countryside, the railway line between Bourne and Sleaford ran this way with level crossings over fen roads. The new line, which opened in 1872, gave townspeople access to the northern parts of Lincolnshire and these gates were manned throughout the day. Cottages were built nearby for the gatekeepers in order that they could more conveniently maintain a continuous duty but still be with their families and tradition was that wives and even children often opened and closed the gates when trains approached. All of the gatekeepers' cottages were built around 1870 of the same design, with whitewashed walls and blue slate roofs, but when the railway line finally closed in 1965, they were sold off as private homes. Several can still be seen along the route of the old railway line in and around Bourne and one such cottage remains incongruously at the far end of a very modern Mill Drove as a permanent reminder of the railway age.


The changing seasons in Mill Drove, looking towards North Road

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