Hereward the Wake was an Anglo-Saxon nobleman who resisted Norman conquest in and around the Fens from his base on the Isle of Ely, and who is believed to have been born in or close to Bourne. The epithet ‘The Wake’, first recorded in the fourteenth century, may refer to his lineage as a member of the Lincolnshire Wake family, though this is disputed by scholars. His life and exploits are recorded in many primary sources (including the Gesta Herewardi, a Latin text from the early twelfth century), though the veracity of many of them is also disputed, and he is the subject of legend. He is sometimes compared, a little tenuously, to Robin Hood.

This is discussed by Derek Turner in Edge of England, by Susanna O’Neill in Folklore of Lincolnshire, and by Polly Howat in Ghosts and Legends of Lincolnshire and the Fen Country, and Hereward the Wake is the subject of numerous works of fiction, including Charles Kingsley’s novel Hereward the Wake (1866), which heavily romanticises him, and which reignited and nationalised the legend. The most recent biography is Peter Rex, Hereward: The Last Englishman (Tempus, 2005).

There is little to acknowledge Hereward in or near Bourne (or Crowland, with which he is also associated) other than the otherwise unremarkable Hereward Street in the town centre, and a painted polystyrene statue in the Heritage Centre, which is a repurposed statue of a Viking warrior from an exhibition in Skegness in the early 2000s. The WakeHereward Project website is fun.

Words by RORY WATERMAN