Bingham is likely to have been formed as a single settlement in the late Saxon period (about 800-1066), and the earliest surviving written record comes from Domesday Book (1086). The name Bingham is of uncertain derivation, but it may refer to the settlement (-ham) of the people of a Saxon leader, Bynna.

When Domesday Book was compiled, the lands and resources of the settlement were divided between three manors (estates), all held by Roger of Bully (de Busli). Together the manors comprised fifty-five families, six carucates (plough-lands notionally of 120 acres), woodland of 1 league by 8 furlongs and meadow of twenty-four acres. The population may be estimated at around 300 or more; the lands probably had roughly the same extent as the modern parish.

There are scattered references to Bingham, mainly to changes in land ownership, in surviving documentary sources throughout the medieval period. A significant local figure at this time was Richard of Bingham, one of the two knights who represented the Shire in Parliament, and was Sheriff of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire in 1302. He founded St Helen's Chapel on the west side of Fairfield St. in 1301, and probably founded the market, confirmation of which was obtained in 1314 by Alice his widow and William his son.

The extent of the medieval settlement of Bingham is uncertain. Better-documented examples elsewhere suggest that, in medieval times, and probably by the late Saxon period, the farmhouses were concentrated around the church, mainly thatched buildings with walls of timber and mud, set within ditched plots arranged along irregular tracks. Most of the medieval remains must lie under the existing houses, but, due to a movement in the later focus of the settlement, fragments of the plan can still be seen.

The existing market place is likely to be on its original site. Its presence ensured the economic prosperity of Bingham, although it was always overshadowed by the larger markets at nearby Newark and Nottingham. However, it may be that the location at the west end of the settlement, tended to draw the inhabited plots in that direction by a gradual process of encroachment to the west and abandonment to the east. At Crow Close, some of the abandoned properties can be seen at the west end of the field (revealed in the air-photograph, but also clearly visible on the ground): they take the form of long narrow rectangles arranged to either side of a long central 'ditch'. This ditch is in fact a hollow-way, a street worn hollow by centuries of traffic, and characteristic of many medieval settlements.

The other chief visible part of the medieval settlement is the church of All Saints. It has a fine tower and spire of about 1200-1350; the nave contains slightly later arcades of octagonal pillars decorated with leaves, animals and grotesque human heads. The leaves resemble those famous examples in the chapter house at Southwell Minster (of which they were probably conscious copies).

The arable land surrounding the settlement was divided into large open fields. A Survey of Bingham drawn up in 1586 shows that the three main arable fields were called Brackendale, Starnhill and Chapel Fields (South field was a later sub-division or addition), and were farmed in rotation with wheat and rye, barley, and fallow. Meadows for grazing were scattered through the arable, and much of the land in the north of the parish was boggy (East and West Moors). Little of the woodland recorded at Domesday remained. By 1684 the communal agriculture of the open fields had ended and given way to the small privately-farmed fields which are still the dominant characteristic of the open country in the area, and the great open fields of Brackendale and Starnhill were preserved only in the names of farms to the south of the town.