Bingham
"Bingham, the capital of the Deanery and Hundred to which it gives name, is pleasantly situated on the Nottingham and Grantham road, 10 miles east by south of the former. 11 miles south-west of Newark, and 123 miles north-north-west of London. Though once of considerable repute from the religious establishment and collegiate church, of a date nearly as old as the conquest, it is now merely a straggling and inconsiderable market town, having a branch from the Nottingham and Grantham Canal. The Nottingham and Grantham Railway passes through this town and has a neat station here. Here are a few stocking frames employed in the Nottingham trade.
The market place is large and open, and has in the centre a very convenient butter-cross. The market, which is only of trifling importance, is held on a Thursday. The fairs for cattle, horses and swine, held on February 10th and 11th, Whit-Thursday. and November 8th and 9th, are tolerably well supplied. Hirings for servants are held on Candlemas Thursday, and on the last Thursday in October, and the feast is at the November fair. The parish contains 2,054 inhabitants and 2,930 acres of land at the rateable value of £8,500. The soil is a rich red loam, and mostly belongs to the Earl of Chesterfield, who is lord of the manor, which was enclosed upwards of 170 years ago, and the tithes were commuted in 1843 for £1,445 per annum. Petty sessions are held here every alternate Thursday. In 1852 there was a neat lock-up and police station erected in Church Street."
[White's "Directory of Nottinghamshire," 1853]
John Mellors tells us that:
"At the end of the 1888 burials the following note appears:
"The new cemetery began to be used in this year and the churchyard was partially closed by order of the Home Secretary."
"NB The names of those persons buried in the cemetery from this date (1888) to Jun 28th 1910
are not recorded in this Register or in any book belonging to the Church"
signed H R M HUTT rector on 28 Jun 1910
- The parish was in the Bingham sub-district in the Bingham Registration District.
- The table below gives census piece numbers, where known:
Census
Year |
Piece No. |
| 1861 |
R.G. 9 / 2483 & 2484 |
| 1891 |
R.G. 12 / 2717 |
- There was an ancient collegiate church and guild dedicated to Saint Mary, which was dissolved in the reign of Edward VI.
- The Anglican parish church is dedicated to All Saints.
- The church was built in the Norman period, apparently in the 14th century, around 1320. The oldest part of the church still standing is the base of the tower dated 1220, the nave and chancel were built about 100 years later.
- On 21 September, 1775, the church spire and clock were damaged by lightening.
- The church was restored from 1845 to 1853.
- The Anglican parish register dates from 1598 and is in good condition.
- The church was in the No. 2 deanery of Bingham.
- The Wesleyan Methodists had a chapel built here in 1818.
- The Primitive Methodists had a chapel built here before 1853.
- The parish was in the Bingham sub-district in the Bingham Registration District.
- Civil Registration began in July, 1837.
This small town, parish, subdistrict, district and wapentake lie about 123 miles north of London, 11 miles wouth-west from newark and 9 miles east of Nottingham. The parish covers about 3,054 acres.
The town sits in the Vale of Belvoir. If you are planning a visit:
- By automobile, take the A52 east out of Nottingham or west out of Grantham in Lincolnshire.
- The A46, the old Roman Fosse Way, passes just to the west of the town.
- There is a railway near the town, but the author was unable to find scheduled passenger service.
- At the Norman Conquest Bingham was the property of two Saxon chieftons, Hoge and Helga.
- The Plague raged here in 1646 and many of its victims are buried in a large yard near the west end of the town.
- In 1710 the town was set on fire in three places, but each fire was quickly extinguished. The fires were set by a sugeon, Thomas PATEFIELD, who had long suffered from a mental derangement. His sentence was to be confined in a small two-room building in the Market Place, in which he lived for some 30 years.
- The Post Office was established here in 1790.
- The astonomer, Robert WHITE, was born here and died here in 1773 at age 80.
- Another notable was Thomas GROVES, a poor lad who fled his apprenticeship and entered the Marines as a private, eventually rising to the rank of Colonel. He died in 1790 after 75 years of service.
- The Police station and lock-up was built here on Church Street in 1852. It was in this building that petty session hearings took place. The county Court was held at the Chesterfield Arms Inn.
- The Statute for hiring servants was held on the second Tuesday in November.
- The national grid reference is SK 7039.
- You'll want an Ordinance Survey Explorer map, which has 2.5 inches to the mile scale.
- See our Maps page for additional resources.
- This place was an ancient parish in Nottingham county and became a modern Civil Parish when those were established.
- The parish was in the north division of the ancient Bingham Wapentake in the southern division of the county.
- After the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834, this parish became the center of the Bingham Poor Law Union.
- Bastardy cases for the Bingham sub-distrct would be heard here in petty sessional hearings.
| Year |
Inhabitants |
| 1801 |
1,082 |
| 1811 |
1,326 |
| 1821 |
1,574 |
| 1831 |
1,738 |
| 1841 |
1,998 |
| 1851 |
2,054 |
| 1861 |
1,918 |
| 1871 |
1,629 |
| 1881 |
1,673 |
| 1891 |
1,487 |
| 1901 |
1,604 |
| 1911 |
1,700 |
- A National School for both sexes was built near the end of the church in 1845 to hold 200 children.
- In Long Acre there is an Infant School which served about 120 infants.
- The Wesleyan Methodists also had a day school here in the 1800s.
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[Last updated: 27-November-2011 - Louis R. Mills]
