Sainsburys supermarket

The opening of the Sainsburys supermarket in Exeter Street on Friday 13th August 1999 was the biggest single retail development in the history of Bourne and was appropriately accompanied by a jazz band that played outside all day to celebrate the occasion. It was also the most controversial because it not only involved the demolition of several houses and business premises but also the re-alignment of the road system amid protests that the work was pushed through by the local authorities with undue haste and without sufficient public consultation to appease the developers.

The store was built on a site previously occupied by Nursery Supplies (Bourne) Ltd that moved to a new out of town location at the corner of the A151 Spalding Road and Meadow Drove in January 1999. The building covers 15,000 sq feet and provided 150 new and part time jobs. The development also included an adjoining car park for 170 cars and it was the amount of traffic to and from the supermarket that caused so much concern in the planning stage because the store was on the edge of a residential area.

The Nursery Supplies depot in Exeter Street before the company moved to  a new location (left) and building work underway on the new supermarket  development in May 1999 (right).

The numbers of cars using Exeter Street had already increased following the recent opening of the Hereward Medical Centre in December 1998 and vehicles parked at the kerbside were causing congestion, especially at busy periods, but the problem was solved by widening the road at this point, installing new pedestrian crossings outside the store and mini-roundabouts to speed up traffic flows at each of Exeter Street, at the junctions with both West Street and North Street.

There is no doubt that the building has enhanced the street scene at this point because it is well designed and constructed in red brick, a material that blends with the earlier buildings in Bourne, but there were complaints that the new store would take trade from the two existing supermarkets, Budgens and Rainbow, and that one of them might well fail as a result, but these fears appeared to be unfounded because all continued doing brisk business.

In October 2003, Sainsburys completed a major extension programme at their store which was almost doubled in size at a cost of £5 million and with the creation of 75 new full and part time jobs. Additional car parking spaces were also provided together with an in-store coffee shop.