MEMORIAL FEATURE: Garden scheme to provide lasting tribute to road crash victims

The Lincolnshire Road Victims Memorial initiative aims to provide an area for families, friends, colleagues and all touched by such a tragedy to quietly reflect on their loss.

Currently, the site is a strip of grassed land, lined by young lime trees, off Five Houses Lane, in Boston Woods.

On Friday, it played host to the launch of the project.

Those behind the project do not have a fixed idea of how the area will look when it is finished, but are considering such additions as a path, somewhere to sit, a feature of some kind, and a shelter for when it is raining.

It is also being investigated whether it will be possible to scatter ashes at the site.

Funds will need to be raised to pay for the alterations to the site and also cover the lease.

The project is the initiative of Anne Bourne, from Boston.

Anne lost her daughter, Louise Nuttell, from Swineshead, in a crash on the county’s roads in 2004, a collision which also claimed the lives of three others.

Louise, aged 35, married and a mother to an eight-year-old son, was travelling with three friends to a show in Skegness. She was killed, along with Kathleen Stephenson, 50, a mother, also from Swineshead, and Sarah Wilkinson, a mother-of-three, one still a baby, and Anne’s niece, and the driver of the other car, Darren Smith, 20, from Friskney, in the head-on crash on the A52 at Friskney.

She said: “I had thought for a long time, with the awful death toll we have on Lincolnshire’s roads, that there ought to be a special place for all of us to remember all of them.”

Anne’s other daughter, Amanda Meeds, survived the crash, but had 27 breaks and fractures.

Of what the memorial would mean, Amanda, 52, said: “It will be somewhere to come, sit, and reflect.”

Among those supporting the project is Boston borough councillor Maureen Dennis, who lost her son Graham, 34, in 2001 when he swerved to avoid pedestrians on the road and collided with two road signs. He died at the scene.

She said: “In small rural communities like ours, it affects the whole village. My son is one of five young people from Old Leake to have died in road accidents in recent years. Those five are known by everyone in the village. It affects everyone.”

Donations to the appeal can be sent to the following acount at Lloyds Bank: Louise and Sarah Memorial Fund, sort code 30-91-04,account number 01303486.