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The abstract of title reveals the history
of ownership prior to 1905, and some names occur in deeds
previously studied. Indeed, this abstract adds useful new
details.
C1, L1 and C2 made up plot number 241,
coloured red on the 1901 Ordnance survey map. This land was
owned by the fifth Earl of Carnarvon by virtue of his father’s
marriage to Evelyn, daughter of the sixth Earl of Chesterfield.
More details of the Chesterfield/Carnarvon trusts can be found
at 1 Market Place and
Cromwell House.
L2, L3 and L4 made up plot 208, coloured
blue on the 1901 map and amounted to just over two acres.
The abstract records that a half-share of this plot originally
belonged to James Harvey. He was a tailor who in the late
1820s built and lived in 1 Market Street, the deeds to which
record his eventual indebtedness to Ann Mabbott, he having
borrowed £400 against the security of that property.
The abstract for 51 Grantham Road reveals
Harvey’s further indebtedness to Mrs Mabbott, for another
£400. An indenture of 15 February 1868 recorded that
‘J Harvey was already indebted to Ann Mabbott in the
principal sum of £300 and had requested her to advance
and lend him the further sum of £100’. The dates
do not tally with the loans recorded against 1 Market Street,
so one must conclude these loans were additional. We know
that by 1853 Harvey was listed in directories as a beer seller
not a tailor, and one might conclude that he was in the process
of going bankrupt! Ann Mabbott
also owned 15 Fairfield
Street, and was described in censuses of the time as a
proprietor of houses.
The property, marked in the drawing above
as L1,L2,L3 (approximate extent coloured red on the 1841 tithe
map) was described as:
All that undivided moiety [half
share] in a piece of land at Bingham in part of a certain
close called the Sweet Laides and a piece of land of breadth
of 12 feet adjoining thereto [the drift road described
in later parts of the document?]
And also one undivided moiety of
land in Bingham being part of a close called Clifton Close
containing 1 acre 2 roods bounded
On the east by lands of Mr Samuel Chettle [a farmer
of Long Acre in White’s directory of 1864, also mentioned
in deeds for East Cottage]
[coloured brown on tithe map]
On or towards the West by lands of the Earl of Chesterfield
[coloured orange on the tithe map]
On or towards the North by lands
of Thomas Gillman, the other part of Clifton Close
[a cottager of Long Acre in White’s directory of
1853, Charles Gilman by 1864. This is G1 on the diagram
above, preventing access to Long Acre east from the Lamins’
Land; the approximate extent is coloured dark blue on
the tithe plan]
On or towards the south by a small piece of ground
lying on the north side of the turnpike from Nottingham
to Grantham [coloured light blue and we know from
later in the documents that it was owned by the Earl of
Chesterfield]
Together with right of carriage
horse and drift road of breadth of 9 feet from the said
plot [i.e. access from Grantham Road to the two closes]…’
He also half owned a cottage in Fisher
Lane which was included in the security for the loan.
We do not know the precise positions
of Clifton Close or Sweet Laides (the conveyance for the houses
suggests Clifton Close was the western part) but the 1841
Tithe Award plan does show a piece called Sweet Land adjacent
to the plots involved. The plots shown on this plan tally
moderately well with those on the1901 map. The access road
indicated on the tithe plan, and east of the plots in question,
is shown on the 1900 map as the track to the farm that once
overlooked Crow Close. This land is east of the plots described
and thus implies this was Chettle’s farm.
Harvey died in February 1862. His executors
were John Doncaster and William Lamin, revealed in these papers
as his son-in-law (which we had rather assumed but could not
demonstrate at the time the history of 1 Market Place was
researched). Ann Mabbott died in June 1863. Her niece, Sarah
Drinkwater, was executrix (see also 15 Fairfield Street).
The abstract then recites a curious set of events: ‘The
sum of £400 and interest was repaid during Ann Mabbott’s
life time (on 21 April 1863) but there had been no reconveyance
(of the property securing the loan)’. Thus Walker’s
executors could not prove they now had title to the land!
They agreed to pay £200 to Mabbott’s estate and
the other £200 was paid by Ann Lamin at the request
of the executors. Ann Lamin was William’s unmarried
(census 1881) sister and lived in East Bridgford with her
younger sister Frances. Title was then assigned to her.
When Ann Lamin died, in July 1893, she
left the land to her nephews John Harvey Lamin, William James
Lamin and Mary Ann Lamin, children of William, her brother
and the original John Harvey’s son in law. In 1893 John
Harvey Lamin had bought 1 Market Street, his uncle’s
old house which he sold in 1903 to Edwin Hitchcock the watchmaker.
At that time he moved to Radcliffe. By the time of the sale
of the Grantham Road plots he was living in West Bridgford
and was still described as a banker’s clerk. The 1896
directory notes John Lamin was a clerk with Wright and Company's
Bank in Nottingham.
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The picture is
completed by the details of the will of William Lamin,
of Saxondale, who died in June 1888 and left a half
share in the property described as ‘half those
3 acres of land called the Sweet Laides with half (of)
one and a half acres called Clifton Close…’
- the land in which John Harvey, his father in law,
had held the other half interest. Thus the moieties
were restored to a single ownership. The property was
to be divided equally between his three children –
James Harvey, William James and Mary Ann.
In July 1905 William James Lamin
bought the strip of land between Clifton Close and the
Grantham Road from the Earl of Chesterfield for £70.
This is the only transaction for which a plan (GR image
3) Ø was drawn up. The piece measures 1 rood
and 2 perches – just over a quarter of an acre.
In May 1906 the Lamins sold an
acre and a half from the total area to James Walker,
a builder whose premises were where Walkers Close is
now. He built four pairs of semi detached houses on
the land sometime between 1906 and 1910. The eastern
pair may have been built later than the western pair;
they are of similar design, even to the paired loft
windows in the gable wall, but the gable walls of the
eastern house are made of common bricks not the facing
bricks Walker use for the western ones. He was presumably
saving on costs! On 2nd February 1910 he sold two pairs
to Mary Ann White, a widow of Bingham, for a total of
£1000. The property conveyed was essentially the
western half of plots L1 and L2 on the diagram, and
is described thus:
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All that piece of land formerly
belonging to the Earl of Carnarvon and abutting
Northwardly on the land next herein described
Southwardly on the Grantham Road
Eastwardly on a roadway leading northwardly from the Grantham
Road set out by the vendor and the site and soil of which
is retained by the vendor and is not intended to be hereby
conveyed
Westwardly by land belonging to the Earl of Carnarvon
And
All that piece of land situate
in Bingham formerly part of Clifton Close abutting
Northwardly on a roadway five feet wide set out by the vendor
over other part of Clifton Close and the site and soil of
which is retained by the vendor and is not intended to be
hereby conveyed
Southwardly on the land hereinbefore described
Eastwardly on the continuation of the roadway leading northwardly
from the Grantham Road and the site and soil of which is
retained by the vendor and is not intended to be hereby
conveyed
Westwardly by land belonging to the Earl of Carnarvon
And
which two pieces of land form as
a combined area measuring
on its northern side next to the retained land of the vendor
(suggesting that he was intending to build more houses here)
eighty five feet three inches
On its southern side sixty six feet six inches
On its eastern side one hundred and one feet six inches
and a further fifty two feet four inches slightly deflecting
towards the west
And on its western side one hundred and fifty four feet
six inches
And
also those two pairs of semi-detached
dwelling houses erected by the vendor upon the said combined
area of two pieces of land and partly standing on one and
partly on the other of the two pieces of land and now in
the occupation of Mssrs Lumby, Wright, Jalland and MacArthur.
The reference to existing tenants suggests
Mary Ann bought the houses as an investment perhaps sometime
after they had been built. We have traced a George Henry Wright
whose first entry in the electoral register was for 1911,
which tallies with a date of late 1910 for building. We have
so far found no trace of Lumby, Jalland or MacArthur. It was
not uncommon for a house to be conveyed after occupation but
it might of course indicate the houses were actually completed
before 1910 and initially let by Walker. To have left the
land undeveloped for three years seems a bit unlikely, although
it might have been an opportunistic purchase whilst he was
engaged elsewhere. The conveyance gave the right to use the
two roadways mentioned – a right since extinguished
with the development of Raymond Drive. It also notes that
(as was usual) the Earl of Carnarvon had retained the mineral
rights under the part that had been his.
Mary Ann undertook to keep in good condition
the ‘existing iron railings and other fencing intended
to be erected along the northern, southern and eastern sides
of the hereditaments and pay a due proportion of maintenance
costs of the roads to the north and east of the hereditaments’
These conditions presumably relate to the drift road and the
area of land Walker had bought and seemed to have been reserving
for further building (L3 on the diagram). The iron railings
are still in place on the northern boundary.
There were several White
families (link to Whites new page) in Bingham in the nineteenth
century. One family was well established in Bingham. Robert
and Charles (both first mentioned in the 1841 census) may
have been brothers and related to the George and Samuel noted
in the 1793/1832 directories. However there is a Samuel in
another family who was probably not related to them, being
born in Newark and not Bingham. He seems to have come to Bingham
in 1854 to open his general dealership. The Mary Ann who bought
51 Grantham Road is unlikely to have been his wife, who was
also a Mary Ann, but the wife of his son, also Samuel. The
first Mary Ann outlived her husband and ran a marine stores
and general dealers in 1889. She is not mentioned in the census
of 1891. The second Mary Ann is thus the most likely one to
have bought the property, perhaps when her Samuel died in
1909. Their son George Henry (also married to a Mary!) succeeded
him in the business - S White and Son which continued trading
into the 1940s, eventually running the steam mill in Station
Street. George’s shop, bake house and accommodation
were in what is now Cranmer House in the Market place.
Mary Ann moved into Rosedene in 1911/12
(electoral roll for county and parochial elections in which
women were eligible to vote). An abstract of title to two
freehold dwelling houses (Rosedene and number 2 Grantham Road)
was prepared in 1939 for the representatives of Mary Ann White,
who had died in November 1939 aged 78. It recites the previous
details and records that her executors were George Henry White
and Elizabeth Annie White – her son and daughter. George
Henry had also owned Cranmer House in the Market Place which
his wife Mary White had bought in 1920 We do not yet know
the history of ownership of the other two houses.
When she died Mary Ann White was living
in Rosedene – number 51. Title to the properties was
vested in Elizabeth Annie White in January 1940. By this time
Elizabeth was living at Rosedene and George Henry was at Woodlands,
Nottingham Road, Bingham.
Elizabeth Annie died in September 1943
and had appointed as executors George Henry (her brother)
and Florence Ada Shepperson (her sister, wife of George Eric
Shepperson). An assent to transfer the property records that
they were empowered to sell the properties and divide the
estate into three equal shares, which they then inherited,
along with Elsie Maud Nicholson (another sister?) as beneficiaries.
The assent carries an endorsement recording
that number 53 was sold to John Heaney in February 1966.
George Henry White and Elsie Nicholson
sold their interest in the houses to Florence Ada Shepperson
on 28th February 1944 for £400 (making them worth £600
in total - £50 more per house than they had cost Mary
Ann White in 1910). Mrs Shepperson was already in residence.
The name of the occupier of number 2(53) is not recorded.
A further abstract of 1965 records the
interest of the personal representatives of Mary Ann White
to two freehold dwellings on Grantham Road. These are not
defined by address, but as Rosedene and number 2 (now 53)
were the subject of the transactions recorded above, these
two would seem to be numbers 55 and 57. The abstract would
have been prepared prior to sale, by the three executors/beneficiaries.
A supplemental abstract records the interest of Elisabeth
Annie, who had died previously to sale and presumably had
left her share to her family. The deeds for these other properties
would reveal more.
On 13th February Mrs Shepperson’s
executors sold Rosedene to Mr and Mrs Wheelecker for £2250.
They in turn sold Rosedene on 30th October 1981 to Paul Francis
Manzi for £24000. He sold to the present owner in 1984.
The houses are deep and therefore larger than they appear
from the road. Number 51 has a bay window on the western side
not repeated in the design of the other houses. This would
have given an uninterrupted view of Bingham to the west, as
well as the view to the north afforded by a rear window (common
to all the houses). |
