The My Home Town Quality Web Site Award was made in August 2001.

This award is for those people in the United Kingdom who spend many hard hours at compiling a portrait of the place they live for the benefit of others and who have produced a web site of quality. The result is a collection of local and independent web sites that cover the whole of Britain, all run by local people who take a great pride in their home town.

The web site was awarded the Médaille d’Or for web site excellence in April 2001.

For a period of five years, this organisation monitored the Internet for exceptional sites that were well designed and presented and contained information that was regularly updated. Their judging categories covered a wide variety of subjects including current affairs, the arts, education, health, history, recreation and science. The citation said:

"Bourne in Words and Pictures is the story of the history and heritage of a small market town in Lincolnshire, England, containing more than 500 photographs and 350,000 words of text, making it the largest local archive currently available. The web site has been written, researched and photographed by Rex Needle, a retired journalist who is now 70 years old and who devotes his time to expanding the information."

An email from the adjudicators who examined the web site said:

"We were very impressed by what we saw and you have now been added to our Roll of Honour."

We received a small and unexpected present shortly before Christmas 2000, gift-wrapped in glowing terms because it was another accolade for our labours, the sixth since we started in 1997.

This recognition was of particular significance because it came from Which Online, the Internet Service Provider administered by the Which Organisation, Britain’s leading institution on consumer affairs that is respected nationwide for its integrity and trustworthiness. We were named as a winner of their Web Site Wonders award for December 2000 and were duly grateful for such acknowledgement that has spurred us on to even greater effort.

The Golden Web Award was presented to the Bourne web site on 25th July 2000.

The award was made by the International Association of Web Masters and Designers in recognition of creativity, integrity and excellence and goes to those sites whose web design and content have achieved levels of merit that deserve recognition. Universities and colleges in Britain, the United States and in Germany, who are interested in English rural life, regularly monitor the content and schools in the Bourne area have acknowledged its addition to the cultural life of the town. When this award was made, the site contained over 400 photographs and more than 200,000 words of text, making it the most comprehensive pictorial guide to the Bourne locality currently available.

The Bourne Web Site has been named as Web site of the Month for August 1999 by The Oldie magazine. It said:

"Website of the month is Rex Needle’s affectionate look at the history of his home town, Bourne in Lincolnshire. It is a personal view of a Lincolnshire market town and the surrounding countryside with more than 200 photographs on site. Mr Needle only started computing and taking pictures two years ago. He will be 69 in September."

The Oldie was launched for older readers in 1992 by Richard Ingrams, who for 23 years was the editor of Private Eye magazine. Increasingly alarmed that the "yoof" obsessed media was sidelining good writers and journalists simply because of their age, Richard Ingrams founded the magazine as a haven for good sense and quality writing. He promises no dumbing down, no spin-doctoring and no genetically modified fish genes and Lord Deedes, himself an oldie, has said of it: "The Oldie is for everyone experiencing a sense of cultural isolation". Oldie Online is the Internet site of the magazine and can be found at www.theoldie.co.uk

This web site has been awarded a 1999 Hot Site rating by the WiseCat organisation which annually selects the 100 most popular sites on the Internet.

The adjudication says:

"Former Fleet Street journalist Rex Needle has produced a little gem of a web site. 'Bourne - A personal view in words and pictures' is all about a tiny town in Lincolnshire but the lovingly written prose and stunning photos will be appreciated by anyone who loves the English countryside."

The site was nominated Cool Site of the Day (UK) for 10th March 1999:

"This is a fascinating example of what makes the web such a powerful medium. . . . What marks this out as so special is that it is the web made personal."

The site won the Searchking King of the Web award in March 1999:

"Searchking wants to reward web masters who show a commitment to quality. . . . We are looking to give our prestigious award to people who care enough about their site to do the best they can to provide a quality site and make a real contribution to the entire Internet community."