Wake House, Bourne
Client: Bourne Arts and Community Trust
About the project: From February 2022, Heritage Lincolnshire are thrilled to be working with the Bourne Arts and Community Trust to work on four areas of development for Wake House. These including Fundraising, Volunteer & Community, Heritage Interpretation and Marketing & Digital.
Wake House is a Grade II listed building which serves as a Community Centre in the heart of the town, and offers a variety of rooms to hire for groups, events and meetings. The building is best known as the birthplace of Charles Frederick Worth, son of a local solicitor, who founded the famous Paris fashion house ‘The House of Worth’ and is seen within the fashion industry as the ‘Father of Haute Couture.’ A blue plaque (as shown below) tells us that he was born here on 13th October 1825 and spent his childhood here in the market town of Bourne.
The property dates back to the early 19th century and was built on the site of the old ‘Waggon and Horses’ public house that was pulled down as part of the development.
Charles Frederick Worth (13 October 1825 – 10 March 1895) was an English fashion designer who founded the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is considered by many fashion historians to be the father of haute couture.Worth is also credited with revolutionising the business of fashion.
Online Talk Programme ; ‘Discovering Wake House’s Famous Resident’
September 2022
Thanks to funding from the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Wake House worked in partnership with Heritage Lincolnshire and The Victoria and Albert Museum in London to discover more about the history of its most famous resident.
Charles Frederick Worth was born at Wake House on 13th October 1825 and spent most of his childhood living in the market town of Bourne. He then became later an English Fashion designer who founded the House of Worth, one of the foremost fashion houses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He is considered by many fashion historians to be the ‘Father of Haute Couture.’ He is also credited with revolutionising the business of fashion with the development of a fashion label, becoming the first designer to include his own brand with the garments he produced – originally signing each piece!
A series of online talks were held to discover the life and work of Charles Frederick Worth as part of the ‘Connected Communities’ National Lottery Heritage Funded project.
Talk 1: Setting the [Fashion] Scene: Born/Bourne in the early 19th century on Tuesday 6 September at 2pm
Talk 2. Lincolnshire and London: Shopping for clothes (1825-1845) on Saturday 10 September at 2pm
Talk 3: Paris, London, New York: C F Worth and the Birth of Couture (1845-1896) on Wednesday 14 September at 6pm
Talk 4: The House of Worth in a connected world (1896 to now) on Friday 16 September at 4pm
Tickets for the recorded talks can be purchased online at: https://www.heritagelincolnshire.org/shop/all/tickets/charles-frederick-worth-an-international-fashion-brand
All proceeds of these talks go to Wake House BACT for future funding bids to re-invest into their historical building.
We need your help! March 2022 we developed an online survey to find out what people knew and understood of Wake House. This included view points from current volunteers and Trustees, businesses that were using and have used the facilities at Wake House and local residents of Bourne.
