"Bingham, a Historical Account of it's Developement "
May 2003 Meeting Report
Guest Speaker - Val Henstock
The May 2003 meeting of the Keyworth & District Local History Society was particularly well attended for the talk by Val Henstock on the history of Bingham. Even the inclement weather did not have an adverse effect upon the numbers attending the meeting. This may well have been due to Val Henstock’s well-deserved reputation preceding her. Her reputation as an acknowledged expert on Bingham is well founded and was evident in the excellent manner in which the presentation was made to our members.
Val began by telling the meeting that she had moved to Bingham some thirty years ago and was just beginning to be accepted as “one of the locals”! The evening’s presentation then took the form of a slide show with Val providing informed information on the subject at hand. The first slide was of Bingham’s Parish Church, St Mary’s and, we were informed, that not only was it Bingham’s oldest building but that, in fact, there was reason to believe that some of it’s 13th Century foundations were of stone taken from a local Roman fort. The present day Bingham traces it’s history to Anglo-Saxon times where the village was built about a mile from the Fosse Way.
The village badge is of the town’s Butter Cross, which was erected in the 19th Century. The Cross itself was built as a memorial to John Hassall, the local agent for the Earl of Chesterfield. Apparently, during a depression, at one period of his stewardship, John Hassall had made representations to the Earl on behalf of his tenants to ease their financial hardships by reducing their rents. As a result of John Hassall’s successful application to the Earl he became a much loved and respected person in the village. So much so that when he died the villagers erected the Butter Cross as a memorial to his memory in 1860. John Hassall’s initials are carved in the stone of the Cross along with the inscription “To Be Beloved Is Better Than All Bargains”.
The Cross is situated in the village centre where the market is held every Thursday. Bingham is the main market town for the Vale of Belvoir. The village was granted the right to hold a market in the year 1314. The village was laid out, originally, with all the roads in the village situated at right angles to the main road, which is the Nottingham to Grantham road. The A.52 used to run right through the centre of the village but it has now, fortunately been diverted to run outside the village making life there considerably more pleasant and quite. The audience were then shown some colour slides of the various hostelries that Bingham boasts of. Principal amongst these is the Wheat Sheaf Inn. It was thought that the Inn was built in 1779 but during some renovation work the date 1772 and the builder’s initials were discovered in the external brickwork. The Inn itself was the principal coaching inn in the village for the Nottingham to Grantham traffic. During the First World War the village was used as a dispersal post for cavalry units and at one time the Inn was stabling up to seventy horses.
The village also has its fair share of religious establishments. Apart from the Parish Church there were also Non-Conformist churches. Principal amongst these was the Methodist Church, which boasted no less than three separate churches. The earliest of these is an old “Ranters” Chapel, (Primitive Methodist). This building has had a somewhat chequered career being at various times a church, a builders offices, a betting shop, and currently a public house, which, incidentally won a Best Pub Food Award in 2002! To paraphrase Sam Goldwyn, “The village forefathers would turn in their graves if they were alive today” to witness such a sinful decline of their cherished building. The village has several other pubs and these were illustrated too. Oddly, for a village that was very well supplied with establishments for the sale and consumption of intoxicating beverages there was a very strong temperance movement in the village in Victorian times. Probably the most memorable episode relating to the Temperance Society related to an occasion when a real North American Red Indian was invited to denounce the evils of “Fire Water”. The meeting, held on the village green was particularly well attended and all was going well until the stage, which perversely, had been constructed of empty beer barrels collapsed throwing the meeting into farce.
One residence, Kirkland House, situated near the centre of the village, on the main road has a very interesting history. The house is built on the site of an old Chapel of Ease. St Helen’s Chapel, as it was known, also had a graveyard in its precincts. The evidence of this sometimes surfaces, literally, to this day. Recently, during kitchen alterations a floor was taken up and some work done in the foundations of the building. Unfortunately three headless skeletons were unearthed in the process!
At one time during the latter half of the 19th Century the village Rector was one Robert Miles. Robert Miles was blessed on an artistic nature and had some very well connected friends in theatrical and literary circles. This resulted in personages of the notoriety and fame of Oscar Wilde and Lilly Langtry visiting the Rectory as Robert Miles’ guests and putting Bingham on the map so to speak. The audience were shown several slides of Bingham’s older building, most of which are no longer used for their original purpose. Amongst these were The Workhouse, Bingham’s first school, an Infant School built by the Earl of Chesterfield in 1840 and now an antiques shop.
Agriculture was the staple industry of the village during the 18th and 19th centuries and several farms were situated in the centre of the village itself. One of these farms has now been converted for use by the local bowls club. Another agricultural building was an old barn that has been converted and is now used as the centre for the Bingham Boxing Club. The boxing club was used in the film 24-7 which was made in 1997 and starred Bob Hoskins and Bruce Jones of Coronation Street fame, (as Les Battersby). The barn had to be “distressed” to make it look like an inner city establishment, the film was supposed to be set in Sneinton which is more “working class” and run down than Bingham! All in all Val gave us a very informed and informative talk and the audience were well entertained with the evenings presentation.