Bourne Register Office

The register office from 1993-2013

One of the essential public facilities in Bourne is the register office which has been based at the Bourne Community Access Point at the Corn Exchange since March 2013. This office is vital to a small market town because it is the place where the public register their births, marriages and deaths, an essential requirement in law.

Mandatory civil registration of births, marriages, and deaths in England and Wales was introduced in 1837 and is now the responsibility of the county council. A superintendent registrar facilitates the legal preliminaries to marriage, conducts civil marriage ceremonies and retains custody of all completed birth, death and marriage registers from the area. The office of the superintendent registrar is the district register office, often referred to (informally) in the media as the registry office.

In earlier times, the registration procedure was in the hands of several officials under the supervision of a superintendent registrar, usually a solicitor. In 1913, for instance, this post was filled by Cecil W Bell from his offices in West Street with his clerk, Charles Edward Hodson, as deputy. He was responsible for the various sub-districts where one set of officials handled births and deaths and another marriages. By 1937, all registrations were handled by one set of officials but fewer in number and still supervised by a superintendent, Cecil Bell.

Today, officers may conduct statutory civil partnership preliminaries and ceremonies, citizenship ceremonies and other non-statutory ceremonies such as naming or renewal of vows. Certified copies of the entries made by the registrars over the years may be obtained either for genealogical research or for modern legal purposes such as supporting passport applications.

Although the Bourne office is only open for two days a week, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, a total of 162 marriages were registered there in 2010 together with 137 deaths and 23 births while 48 wedding ceremonies were also held.

The register office was originally situated at Wake House. The building was then used as the local offices of South Kesteven District Council from 1974 until 1993 when the authority relocated to the town hall. In those days there was a small room used for the registrations and the larger Baxter Room could be rented for weddings for a small fee. Then in 1993, the facility moved to Saxonhurst, an early 19th century town house in West Street leased by Lincolnshire County Council, the ground floor being used as the register office and a ceremonies room for weddings and the upper rooms let out as flats.

Fears about the closure of the West Street facility surfaced in the summer of 2011. Councillor Martin Hill (Folkingham Rural), Conservative leader of Lincolnshire County Council, told the Stamford Mercury (August 12th) that all registration offices in the county were being reviewed to ensure that they were efficient and provided a value-for-money quality service. He told the newspaper: "Recommendations have been put forward to consider changes at registration offices that are currently open a few hours a week where the cost to run them is more than the income they generate."

Closure would mean that people from Bourne and the surrounding area would have to travel to Stamford to file their registrations, a round trip of around 30 miles in most cases. The announcement therefore brought a wave of protest including an emotive letter to the newspaper (August 19th) from Mrs Robbie Britton, of Millfield Road, Morton, near Bourne, who described the possibility of closure as "achingly insensitive". She went on: "Picture the young single mum who finds herself on her own with a tiny baby. What chaos life is in the first months. But she can get an infrequent bus service to Stamford with that baby in order to register the birth then wait there two hours to get a bus back, never mind the feeding needs or even how tired and weepy she feels. Or the grieving widow or widower, no pals, no transport, but has to get a certificate before burial can take place. Well, just get on the infrequent bus and get to Stamford 15 miles away to register. County councillors sorry and all that - I don't think."

The possible closure of the register office was discussed by the town council at its meeting on Tuesday 30th August 2011 when members agreed unanimously that it would have a detrimental effect on Bourne and the surrounding villages and decided to object in the strongest possible terms. The clerk, Mrs Nelly Jacobs, told the Stamford Mercury (September 2nd) that members were concerned that as the area around Bourne was entirely rural, public transport to other register offices in the area was very poor and in some cases non-existent. “Registering the death of a loved one is stressful and upsetting enough without having to worry about how one manages to get there within the given timescale”, she said. “The council found the proposal totally unacceptable and hopes that the authority will reconsider.”

In August 2012, following a 90-day consultation by Lincolnshire County Council, it was announced that the West Street premises would be closing and the registration service transferred to the new Bourne Community Access Point which was then being established in the Corn Exchange. This was seen as a combined victory for Bourne Town Council and local residents who had protested that the service should not be phased out in the town because it would mean travelling to Stamford when making a registration. Research carried out by Councillor David Mapp (Bourne West) compared the performance of register offices elsewhere in Lincolnshire which were under threat and stressed the inconvenience it would cause if people had to travel to Stamford, especially those who relied on public transport. He said that anyone wanting to register a birth, marriage or death would face a five-hour round trip if they had to go by bus.

It was then announced that the register office would definitely be given a home at the new Bourne Community Access Point due to open early in 2013. County councillor Sue Woolley (Bourne Abbey) told The Local newspaper (3rd August 2012): "This is great news for local people who not only helped save the service from closure but will now benefit from a brand new location that also offers a range of council services under one roof. If they had not made the effort then things might have been different."

The register office in West Street finally closed in March 2013 and was moved as expected to the new Bourne Community Access Point at the Corn Exchange. However, the ceremony room where weddings had been conducted, was not retained because there was insufficient space. Lincolnshire County Council said it was hoped that the Corn Exchange would be licensed in the future to allow weddings take place although the report added ominously: “In addition there are a number of licensed venues in the locality offering alternatives.”

There are two other venues but both are some distance away, the Toft Country House Hotel which is three miles and the Baskervilles Hotel at Baston which is five miles, although there are others even further, three in Stamford, three in Spalding and one in Holbeach, and so it appears that the amenity for civil weddings to take place has been lost to Bourne for the time being.

REVISED MARCH 2013

See also

Bourne Community Access Point     Hugh Hobson