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Bingham was granted a Market Charter 1314.
Dormant from 1890 it was revived on 10 July 1975. The November Hiring
Fair for agricultural labourers and domestic servants was held here
until the late 19C.
The Buttercross was erected at a cost of £700
in 1861 by public subscription in memory of John Hassall the Earl
of Chesterfield's popular land agent. It was designed by Nottingham
architect Thomas Chambers Hine and replaced a similar earlier one
that had become derelict. Note the end of the gas pipe and brackets
that must have been fitted to supply the lamp in the roof after
the gas works were opened north of the railway line in 1853.
There have always been shops in the Market
Place and many of those here today replaced older dilapidated ones. |
The
Buttercross |
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Around the square are buildings of many periods.
The Georgian building (No 1)
at the west end was built around 1830 as a tailor's shop and residence.
In 1862 it was sold as a residence to James Hardstaff who had owned
the grocers' at the corner of Union and Market Streets. From 1901
to 1972 it was a watchmaker and jeweller's shop and residence.
Eaton Place and its car park were built in
the late 1960's. They replaced the old post office and other shops
together with allotments to the rear. The latest 21st century infill
shops alongside have been built to blend with the older styles.
The Manor House |
Careful selection of materials by the
builder in about 1830/1850 produced the attractive chequered
brickwork terrace (Nos 13,14,15 and 16) west of Beauvale House.
Clearly built in two parts (you can see the join), the eastern
portion is noted as a boarding school in the 1861 census.
Three schoolmistresses are listed along with several pupils.
Initially Hardstaff and Brown's "top shop" was on
the corner; it was the Tip Top Bakery from 1933 until 1974.
Note also the curved bricks used at the far entrance opposite
Newgate Street to protect against damage from cartwheels.
| The front of Beauvale House No16 dates from
about 1840; internal beams suggest the main structure
is 18C and part 17C. Ready-made cast iron porches, produced
in Coalbrookdale, became popular during the early 19C.
Originally a farm occupied by William Pacey farming
221 acres employing four men and owned by the Chesterfields,
two plots to the east were sold the 1850s. Next-door
Mr William Chettle built Vernon House (No17) in a classical
style. The second was sold to William Clifton in December
1854 who built 'The Limes' (No18). Chettle, 32 in 1861,
was a dealer in linseed cake. He lived here with his
wife, Annie (36) six children, a governess and two servants.
Clearly a successful businessman! Clifton was a widowed
builder whose 14-year-old niece kept house for him along
with a 17-year-old serving girl. In 1938 Bingham Rural
District Council moved from No15 to Vernon House, extending
into 'The Limes' in 1957. The fire station was at the
rear in the 1940s and 1950s.
Beauvale House |
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The Crown Inn is a 1960s replacement
of a much older public house having its entrance across the
corner. We know from a plan attached to the deeds of 4-6
Station Street that the freehold of the (old) Crown was
sold by Lord Carnarvon in or around 1920. Next door, No19
is a late 18C house (note the Yorkshire sliding sash windows)
with a 19C lean-to shop. In the directory of 1889 it was listed
as Gray's
painters and decorator's shop, and remained so until the
early 1970s. George Langley is listed in 1865 as a painter
and paperhanger, possibly here.
The Manor House in the northeast corner is was built
around the 1700's. The central fireplace and chimney tend to place it
before 1760, when this style became unfashionable. It may have been a
merchant's house with a hoist in the place of the half round plaster panel.
It is the only building in the town with entirely header-bonded brickwork,
popular about the end of the seventeenth century. The larger ground floor
window is clearly a later alteration (probably late 19C), with its larger
panes and different keystone. There are also the marks of two insurance
plates that have been removed within the last 15 years. Might this have
been the home of Thomas Machin, a wool merchant who lived in a six roomed
house and died in 1740? (See 'Bingham in the Past' page 40). It was the
likely home and office successively of Henry and Charles Doncaster, tax
collectors, Asst Overseers, accountants and house and insurance agents.
One of these may well have felt the need to improve the office accommodation
by enlarging the window. The Earl of Carnarvon sold the freehold in 1920
to William and Charles Doncaster.
The early 19C building on the corner with Church
Street repays close study, illustrating the many ways a building can change
over time. It was Doncaster's drapers shop, called Manchester House, for
over a hundred years until 1970. The eastern portion was originally residential
accommodation with a front door. Look carefully at the side wall (over
the school boundary wall) and you will see old narrow brickwork up to
the first floor level, indicating that this residential eastern portion
was built on an older single storey lean to attached to the original western
part of the building. The label mould above the former window matches
that over the upper windows. In older buildings this feature was to protect
the window from water dripping from the roof (see the gable end of the
post office house in Market Street). Victorian builders copied this and
many other older architectural features for decorative effect. Note also
the extremely elaborate and probably expensive dentillation brickwork
supporting the eaves of the newer portion. Compare what you see now with
the photograph
taken about 1900 to see just how the building has changed over the years.
The streetlight has gone (many street lights in Bingham were attached
to buildings), shop windows have been modernised and new ones added. Most
interestingly, observe that there was no window above the JB advert. There
is now, and it was clearly constructed in the original style to match
the original windows of the older building.
Two sisters ran Bingham's first telephone exchange
at No29. The 1950s brutalism of the Co-op contrasts with the warm brick
hues of the mid Victorian and Georgian facades on the south side of the
square. The Co-op car park replaced older shops including the Welfare
Office.
| Station Street was formerly Chesterfield Street;
it was renamed a few years after the railway came in 1850. The Blue
Bell pub stood where the Crown car park is. During the 1920s the old
pub was the home of Bingham
Institute where the British Legion met. The publican at the Crown
Inn farmed the land on the east, owned by the Chesterfields, until
various parcels were sold for building. Nº4
was built in about 1850 as a shoemaker's - note the faded painted
advertisement on the sidewall. No6
was added five years later by the shoemaker and rented to a watchmaker.
Watchmakers occupied it for over 50 years, one moving to 1
Market Place in 1903. Number 4 continued as a shoemakers (Hitchcock)
until the 1920s. No 6 became Morris' sweet shop. |
 Bingham
Station |
Waverley Cottage occupies a plot with a similar history
and dates from around the same time. The 1881 census has Edmund Richmond
as a tailor probably living here. His apprentice moved from here to his
own shop in Market Street and then in 1897 to his own premises at 9
Newgate Street. Waverley Cottage was still a tailor's in the 1920s
and 30s (John Magson).
In 1857 The Earl of Chesterfield sold William Huckerby,
Superintendent Registrar, a piece of land from Beauvale Farm fronting
onto Chesterfield Street to build Cromwell
House. Later it was owned by a member of the Doncaster family.
'Northleigh' (1913/4) is one of four
similar villas built by James Walker between 1899 and 1915.
(The others are Westholme 1910,
Eastville 1899 [107 Grantham Road] and No6 The Banks). The
Women's Institute hall dates from 1920 and was made up of
two WW1 army huts. The attractively proportioned railway station,
probably designed by Thomas Chambers Hine, was built in 1851.
It originally had an equally attractive waiting room and offices
on the east side of the entrance hall, demolished after the
1950s. The line had been threatened by Dr Beeching's report
but survived after a public outcry.
West of the station was a cattle dock and timber
yard; some pulley wheels for hoists survive over the entrances to the
contemporary warehouse (a goods depot was on Chapel Lane opposite the
still original signal box). In the 1881 census a Stephen Bickmore is listed
as a master builder living at the Blue Bell and in the 1879 directory
as builder and timber merchant of Station Street. The timber yard may
have been his. Old Mill Court is on the site of former steam corn mills,
at one time owned by Hardstaff and Brown.
The rest is 20C infill. Nºs6 and
8 replaced some very old barns. The bungalows at the end of
Station Street were built on semi-derelict land that has seen
service as the council yard and a coal depot. Those in Langtry
Gardens, the name recalling her visits to Bingham as a friend
of Canon Miles' son, are on surplus land from Robert Miles
School, formerly the Rectory grounds. |
