There is archaeological evidence that south Nottinghamshire
was largely stripped of its forest and was being farmed by
the Bronze Age. When the Romans established
a settlement at Margidunum it was within an existing, well-populated
farming community. There is evidence of one Roman villa within
the limits of the present-day parish. Another has been located
near Newton Lane only a few hundred yards outside the parish.
Roman villas were, in fact, the houses, farm buildings and
workshops necessary for a large agricultural estate, rather
like the old country houses and estates of England.
Barley on Starnhill Farm,
grown as a second crop after wheat.
Photo: Peter Allen
|
Practically nothing is known about the
period of Anglo-Saxon occupation of the area, other than that
they were here and were certainly farmers. By the time of
the Domesday Book in 1086, therefore, there was already a
tradition of farming in Bingham that stretched back 2000 years
or more.
The Domesday Book is the earliest document that gives information
about farming in Bingham. At that time it is said that Bingham
comprised three manors, but it is believed that the two smaller
ones had been joined together. This eventually became known
as the Porter Estate and is believed to have contained Crow
Close (now part of the Southwell Diocese). The rest became
the Earl of Chesterfield’s Shelford estate, but in the
1920s when the Crown acquired it, they also purchased some
of what had been the Porter estate and became the principal
landowner in the parish.
The Domesday Book lists an area of what
has been translated as “pasture forest” measuring
one league by eight furlongs. This is presumably parkland,
rather than forest. The rest of the three manors was given
over to arable farmland, pasture and meadow. Farming then
was by the open field method and it is known that there were
four fields in Bingham. Starnhill
(or East) Field, South Field and Brackendale (or West) Field
were arable. North (or Chapel) Field was largely meadow. The
northern and north-eastern parts of the parish were boggy
moorland and not cultivated until they were drained. This
was some time before 1776, the date of the earliest map of
the Chesterfield estate. Little is known of the detail of
the crops grown in the open fields apart from wheat, oats,
barley and peas. The survey of the parish carried out in 1586
made reference to several hundred “beasts” and
2400 sheep that were grazed on the land in the winter months.
Although not strictly farming there were
at least two rabbit warrens maintained in the parish providing
an extra source of protein for the medieval population.
The open field system of farming ended around 1680-90, when
the parish was enclosed
and the open fields divided up into many small closes (fields
in modern terms), which were cultivated by tenant farmers.
In her book, Bingham in the past, Elizabeth
Foster has examined several sources to find out about farming
in the seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth centuries.
She came to the conclusion that apart from a very few tradesmen
who lived entirely by their trade everyone in Bingham had
some connection with the land. They were either farmers or
farm workers or, if they were trades people, they reared some
livestock or grew crops to provide food for the kitchen and
to supplement their income. Indeed, the early
nineteenth century maps of Bingham show that most houses
were situated along the main east-west roads and had narrow
strips of land behind them. It is thought that this pattern
had remained unchanged since the Middle Ages.
An examination of inventories carried
out by Elizabeth Foster showed that in terms of value, agricultural
assets were ranked in the order, arable, horses, sheep, cattle
and pigs. Of these, cattle and pigs were fairly small. Bingham
had never been a significant area for dairy farming and pigs
were usually kept, along with poultry and other animals, only
for the kitchen.
In 1840 there were 89 people, including the Rector, listed
in the Tithe Awards as owning or renting meadow, pasture or
arable land in the parish of Bingham. Amongst them there were
25 farmers with more than 20 acres. Most of the others were
cottagers and householders, some of whom had as little as
an acre.
Andrew Esdaile in his Historical Account
of Bingham, published in 1851, says that in that year there
were 26 farmers and the Rector with 20 to 200 acres and 21
cottagers who grew corn (as distinct from householders with
a patch of land). The number of farmers dropped from then
on, reaching 14 during the 1870s and remaining fairly stable
at this level until the 1960s.
Total farms
Farms of more than 150 acres
Farms of less than 20 acres
Smallholders/cottagers(3)
Market gardeners and nurserymen, gardeners |
1851
26
5
--
21
-- |
1871
20
6
--
23
2 |
1881
14
4
--
16
2 |
1891
15
NA
22
7 |
1908
15
NA
7 |
1922
14
NA
--
1
9 |
1941
14
7
NA
1
3 |
2003
11
8(1)
4(2)
--
1 |
Notes
1. Four of the farms are managed as two farm
units. Two others are part of a consortium. Most of Bingham’s
farmers have land outside the parish. The smallest farmed
unit among them is 550 acres.
2. These are single fields rented by farmers who have larger
farms outside the parish.
3. This category includes cottagers, smallholders, cottager-farmers
and farmers with less than 20 acres.
The number of farmers with more than
150 acres varied between four and six through the nineteenth
century and there were always some quite big farms. In 1840
the largest farmer was John Hutchinson, who lived at Starnhill
Farm. He had 259 acres, all rented from the Earl of Chesterfield.
An ancestor of his, also John Hutchinson, yeoman, was the
biggest farmer in Bingham in 1723. Also in 1840, John Foster
and William Pacey farmed over 200 acres of rented land. The
largest landowner, besides the Earl of Chesterfield was Samuel
Walker who farmed 103 acres.
Thirty years later the biggest farms
were twice the size they had been in 1840. In 1871 John Foster
farmed 500 acres with 8 men and 3 boys and John Hutchinson’s
tenancy had increased to 386 acres. However, Robert Brewster
may have had more than either of them. His acreage was not
quoted in the 1871 census, but he employed 12 labourers, which
is more than John Foster, and in 1881 he had 600 acres and
employed 17 labourers. Another huge farm in 1881 was Ann Brett’s,
with 511 acres.
Information about crops that were grown
in Bingham during the nineteenth century comes mainly from
Robert Hart’s farm accounts for the period 1846 to 1861.
These were found written on the back of the draft register
of Baptisms for 1792-1806 and are held in Nottinghamshire
County Archives. Crops specifically mentioned in the accounts
include onions, kidney beans, Regent and Prophet potatoes,
clover, mangolds, swedes, wheat, barley and hay. Another farm
diary for 1843 to 1847, kept by Henry Smith, who farmed in
Cropwell Butler, lists pigs, cattle, horses, sheep, oats,
barley, wheat, beans, lentils, red clover, grass for seed,
swedes, green barrel turnips, clover for seed and hay. He
also lists the game he shot in each year. In 1847 he killed
53 hares, 37 partridge and 7 pheasant.
1850 - 1880
wheat
barley
potatoes
onions
peas
mangolds
swedes
turnips
clover
hay
kidney beans
carrots
lentils |
1940 –1960s
wheat
barley
potatoes
peas
mangolds
swedes
turnips
clover
hay
field beans
tic beans
kale
rye
oats
sugar beet
|
2002/2003
wheat
barley
potatoes
onions
peas
sugar beet
oilseed rape
linseed
Phacelia |
There is no indication of the size of
Robert Hart’s farm in the accounts, but in the 1871
census he is said to have 17 acres. He described himself in
the census as a cottager. In 1855 Robert Hart paid £1
: 4s : 4d for a year in rent to Lord Chesterfield and tithes
of £7 : 15s : 4d for the same year. He also had to pay
Land Tax and there is a mention of paying £8 interest
to Mr Pacey. He sold his haystack for £32 in 1846. In
1861 he sold 7 tons of swedes to Mr Chettle. The previous
year he bought two pigs by auction in Bingham Market from
Mr Oakes. One was for £1 : 1s : 6d; the other 10/6d.
Other interesting items include the hire of Mr Strong’s
steam threshing machine for his wheat and barley in 1855,
the dispatch of his wheat to Nottingham by train, the purchase
of 2 loads of gas lime to kill slugs on 1 ½ acres of
potatoes in High Close, the hire of 8 Irishmen to cut 2 acres
of red wheat in the Old Close at 13/- an acre and the hire
of Mr A. Footit’s donkey for 8 weeks and 4 days.
Harvest at Saxondale in
1896. The steam tractor has a vertically mounted drive
wheel carrying a belt to drive machinery that is out of
shot, but which might have been a threshing machine.
Photo: courtesy Greg Franks
|
An interesting insight
into mid-nineteenth century farming is provided by the
Weslayan school logbooks
for the period 1863 to 1879. The dependence of the cottagers
and farmers on child labour is continually made, as is
the dependence of the poor families on wages brought in
by the children. Even when school attendance was made
compulsory in 1872 absenteeism remained high. Many reasons
for being absent were given by the master, Thomas Jones,
including:
February
April
May
June
June/ July
August
September
November
|
bean dropping
bean and potato dropping
field weeding
picking gooseberries
hay making
harvest, fruit gathering, bird scaring
potato gathering, gleaning
raising carrots |
In the Church school logbook turnip and mangold singling
(thinning to a single seedling after the farmer has done
the first thinning with a hoe), turnip gathering and pea
pulling are also given as causes of absence. |
Besides these jobs, children were required
for stone picking, to tend the horses, help with the ploughing
and work in the stack yard. Girls were often taken out of
school to look after younger siblings while their parents
were working in the fields. Even when they attended school
the children would not always stay the full day. The master
complained that they left at 11.30am to take dinner to their
fathers in the fields and again at 3 or 3.30pm to take tea
and to gather fruit in the orchards. Most poignant, however,
was the comment in February 1865 that two more children had
left Bingham, bringing to 30 the total lost to the school
because of the severe winter
weather and no farm work in Bingham. Almost as hard for
the parents was the following summer, which was extremely
wet and caused much delay in gathering the harvest. In this
case school attendance was high, when normally the children
would have been out in the fields earning money.
In 1942 there were 2500 acres of orchard in Nottinghamshire,
most of which were west of the Trent. Only Bingham and Newark
were notable fruit-growing areas on the east of the river.
70% of the orchards were planted on the red clay soil of the
Triassic Mercia Mudstone Group. Throughout the county they
were grass orchards and it was common for them to be grazed
by poultry. Because most were fairly small they were usually
combined with market gardens.
The earliest reference
to orchards in Bingham, so far found, is to the area now bounded
by Long Acre, Market Street, Union Street and Needham Street
being an orchard in 1758. The Tithe Awards for 1840 lists
about 10.5 acres of land under orchard in Bingham. They ranged
from just less than half an acre to 1.25 acres. On the 1883
map there were more than 24 acres of orchard, including plantings
in gardens and near farmhouses, but the largest was still
only around two acres. This level of fruit cultivation continued
until after the Second World War.
Apples, pears, plums, damsons, cherries
and gooseberries were all grown here and there is a single
reference in the parish magazine for March 1869 saying, for
February, “apricots are in full bloom”. The Bacon
family, who still retain a small orchard in The Banks, trace
their involvement in orchards to 1840 when the first of their
family to live in Bingham came here from Norfolk. He is credited
with introducing the Victoria plum to Bingham and most references
to Bingham’s orchards say that it was noted for its
plums.
The varieties of fruit grown can be guessed
with reference to surviving trees in remnants of the old orchards
and varieties remembered by old residents of Bingham. Among
apples Bramley Seedling was the commonest and there is one
tree surviving that was grown from a cutting taken off the
original tree in Southwell. Other apples known to have been
grown here are Howgate Wonder and Warner King, both cooking
apples, Russet and Cox’s Orange Pippin. Information
can also be gleaned from Henry Smith’s list of the apple
trees he planted at his farm in Cropwell Butler in 1841. The
twelve varieties listed were Greenups Pippin, Northern Greening,
Billage Pippin, Caldwell, Margell, Lord Lennox, Pike’s
Permain, White Hawthorn Dean, Walker’s Summer Broading,
Clifton’s Nonsuch and Blenheim Orange. Of these only
Blenheim Orange, Lord Lennox and Northern Greening are in
the list of apple varieties kept by the Brogdale Horticultural
Trust, which holds the national collection of 2400 varieties
of apple.
Besides the Victoria plum there were
greengages and goldengages, all of which survive in the remains
of the Bacon’s orchard in the grounds of Toot Hill School.
The commonest damson was Merryweather, which is a specifically
Nottinghamshire variety.
The name by which those who work small land holdings are called
has changed with time. Until the end of the nineteenth century
the term cottager generally applied to someone who owned a
small piece of land within which they lived and on which they
had orchards, grew crops or kept livestock. However, it is
not uncommon for the same individual to call himself a cottager
in one census and farmer in the next. The term market gardener
appears in the 1871 census, but in 1891 there are only cottagers
and gardeners. Market gardeners reappear in Kelly’s
directory for 1908 and from then on there are market gardeners,
small holders and nurserymen. Judging from the names of the
people involved the terms market gardener, gardener and cottager
have been synonymous.
Up to the end of the nineteenth century
there were as many as 29 cottagers, market gardeners, nurserymen
and smallholders in the parish. Gladys Marian Benton, writing
about the period up to 1903, when she left Bingham, recalls
the market gardeners selling fruit and vegetables house to
house from their handcarts every Saturday morning. During
the first decade of the twentieth century, however, there
was a sudden drop in their numbers. Seven are recorded in
1908, ten in 1922, four in 1941 and in 2003 there was one
garden nursery. Anecdotal evidence suggests that in the twentieth
century the smallholders and market gardeners kept pigs and
poultry, grew vegetables and kept the orchards. There is,
however, a problem with numbers here. Orchards continued to
be commercially exploited until the big expansion of Bingham
in the 1950s, which suggests that many of them were owned
by individuals who identified themselves in some other way
than as market gardeners in the directories.
The tractor towing a trailer
on which is mounted a rotating cutting wheel for trimming
the hedges is a Fordson E27N, which was manufactured
in 1932/33 and was powered by petrol and paraffin. The
picture was taken on Starnhill Farm sometime after that.
Photo: courtesy Greg Franks
|
From the mid nineteenth century to 1940,
British farming was in decline and Bingham did not escape
the impact. In the second half of the nineteenth century unemployment
rose in Bingham as result of the collapse of the framework
knitting cottage industry, a gradual reduction in the demand
for lace-making outworkers and loss of work on the farms.
The population of Bingham fell from 2,054 in 1851 to 1,487
in 1891 as people migrated to the nearby towns in search of
work. It increased only slowly in the first half of the twentieth
century, reaching 1597 in 1931, but not because of any change
in fortunes on the land. By then farming had ceased to be
the major employer in Bingham.
From the 1830s steam-power was beginning
to be used to drive farm machinery and by the 1850s steam-powered
ploughs, cultivators and threshing machines were in use throughout
the country. It continued to be important until after the
First World War and in Bingham steam ploughs were used on
Starnhill Farm between the wars. However, it was the use of
the internal combustion engine in farm machinery that brought
about a true revolution in farm mechanisation and led an amazing
period of change. Between 1948 and 1965 the number of working
horses in Great Britain fell from 457,000 to 26,000. Combine
harvesters went up from 5225 to 57,950. In the fifty years
between 1948 and 1998 the total labour force on British farms
fell from 849,000 to 248,000. At the same time yields per
acre for almost everything grown doubled or tripled. The level
of self-sufficiency for indigenous food types rose from 45%
to just over 82%.
In 1925 the Crown Estates bought nearly
all the farm land in Bingham and all the farmers since then
have been tenants of the Crown. For the most part individual
farms were rented separately, but during the 1920s there was
a period when Hardstaff & Brown, the grocers in Market
Place, formed a company and rented Starnhill, Foss and the
Brackendale farms. They were managed for the company by farm
bailiffs.
In Bingham, the Cockaynes, who have farmed
the Top and Middle Brackendale farms since 1935, bought their
first tractor just before the Second World War. Howard Lamin
bought his first combine harvester, a Massey-Harris from Canada,
in 1949. In 1940, in Britain it was not economical to buy
a combine harvester for less than 100 acres of grain. By 1946
both W.A Hutton at Newgate Street farm and Howard Lamin at
Starnhill had ceased to use horses and in the early 1950s
working horses had all but disappeared from the parish.
| |
Steam
ploughs at work in fields near Rampton, Nottinghamshire,
in 1928. The winding drum is clearly seen beneath the
boiler. In the distance is another engine. The plough
is between the two throwing up a cloud of dust behind
it. The way this system worked was for the two engines
to power a cable to which the plough was attached. The
cable was used to pull the plough, with a man sitting
on it to steer it, across the field between the two
engines. When one pass was completed the two engines
moved forward so that the plough could then work the
next row. There were many variations on this theme,
some requiring only one engine. They are described in
a book Ploughing by Steam, by John Haining and Colin
Tyler (Ashgrove Press, Bath, 1970.)
Published by Guy & Co, Nottingham. Photo: courtesy
of Greg Franks |
Up to the early 1960s all of Bingham’s
farms were still essentially mixed and there remained some
smallholders among the big farms. There were some small to
medium-sizes dairy herds and cattle were brought in for fattening.
Several farmers kept small flocks of sheep and there was a
communal sheep dip near Moor Bridge. Most farms had a few
pigs, mainly for the kitchen, but they were the mainstay for
one or two of the smallholders and in the 1930s Howard Lamin
kept a large herd of pedigree Middle White pigs. Mrs Warner
kept 200-300 turkeys for Christmas sales and there were one
or two farms and smallholders with a substantial number of
laying hens. The range of crops grown included wheat, barley,
oats, rye (grown only on Lower Brackendale Farm), potatoes,
peas (for the food processing plant in East Bridgford up to
its closure in 1957), sugar beet, kale, mangolds, swedes,
clover for seed, tic beans (for pigeon food), field beans
(for horse food), ley (clover and rye grass for horse hay),
clover to plough in as green manure and grass. The dominant
crop, however, even then, was wheat. The crop plan for Upper
and Middle Brackendale farms in 1948, when they had two horses,
shows wheat, with 51 acres to be their main crop. They had
27.75 acres of barley and 7 of oats. By 1951, with one horse,
they had 86 acres of wheat and 19 of barley.
During the 1950s and early 1960s a major
reorganisation of the farms took place as a result of initiatives
taken by the Crown Estates, the landowners. In response to
the County development plan for Bingham, which had in it a
requirement not to mix farming and domestic buildings (see
Bingham developed and redeveloped.),
new farms were built outside the town. At the same time, the
Crown Estates rationalised the land holdings in order to build
up a contiguous area for each farm. Prior to that, individual
farmers had worked fields that were scattered about all over
the parish. The Crown Estate also created larger farm units
and reduced the number of farm tenancies in the parish.
Onions grown on Starnhill
Farm are topped mechanically before being harvested.
Photo: Peter Allen |
The trend away from mixed farming began
during the early 1960s. Individual farmers had their own reasons
for selling off the dairy herds, but they included the costs
attached to the introduction of TT testing and the need to
raise capital to invest in machinery. With no cattle and horses
to feed more land became available for arable farming. In
the north-eastern and south-eastern parts of the parish hedges
were removed to make large fields more suitable for the monocultural
regimes that were coming in and the farming landscape in Bingham
changed completely.
As one example of how the farmers reacted
to external economic pressures during this period, the story
of Starnhill Farm is illustrative. Arthur Howard Lamin came
to Starnhill Farm in 1930, when it was 337 acres and run as
a typical mixed farm. When his son, Peter, joined him in 1954
he brought an interest in horticulture and sought to diversify
by putting 25 acres to horticultural crops delivering to the
wholesale market. They grew cabbages, cauliflowers, lettuce,
celery, runner beans and carrots, but the arrival of supermarkets
on the retail scene made this venture uneconomical and it
was stopped in 1962. Just before this, in 1960, the herd of
pedigree Friesians was sold to buy more land to improve economic
effectiveness of the farm unit as a whole. They continued
to bring in livestock for fattening for a while, but this
ended in 1963/64.
Still influenced by his interest in horticulture,
Peter Lamin then joined with six other farmers in the area
to form Nottinghamshire Bulbs, which grew tulips. Some were
sold as cut flowers, but most were headed and the bulbs sold
on to be grown in heated greenhouses for winter flowering.
At the peak there were 18 acres of tulips on Starnhill Farm.
Then, during the oil crisis in 1973/74 the price of fuel for
heating rose to such heights that the winter forcing business
collapsed and Nottinghamshire Bulbs closed down. This venture
was not the first of its kind in the area. In the 1950s Dennis
Richardson of Saxondale grew daffodils commercially and even
now, in the spring daffodils from stray bulbs can be seen
along the side of the A52 west of Saxondale.
By this time, the range of crops grown
on the farm was beginning to narrow. Potatoes had been grown
on a field scale since 1930 and in the 1960s the acreage at
Starnhill was increased to 120 acres. Irrigation was introduced
in 1958. In recent years the potatoes were used mainly for
French fries and they remained a major crop until 2002, when
competition from Holland and Belgium made it uneconomical
for them to continue.
Winter onions, harvested
by contractors on Starnhill Farm, are lifted five rows
at a time at walking pace and loaded onto a trailer
via a conveyor belt.
Photo: Peter Allen |
Wheat is one of the main
crops grown in Bingham. It is used for biscuits or pet
food; some is used for bread.
Photo: Peter Allen |
Onions had been grown on a field scale
since 1970, when both spring-drilled and winter onions were
grown. The spring-drilled onions were sold via a co-operative
in Boston to Safeway and Sainsbury. The arrival of ASDA as
a competitor forced Safeway and Sainsbury to reduce the number
of their suppliers and Starnhill ceased growing spring-drilled
onions. The farm continues to grow winter onions, which are
used in processed food.
By 1999 the farm grew wheat, barley,
oil-seed rape, sugar beet, potatoes and onions. They rented
550 acres within the parish out of a total of 1150 acres.
In 2004 there are three main farming
units within the parish. Starnhill Farm and Holme Farm are
joined within a company called FARMECO; Whitefields and Spring
farms are worked by the Hammonds as a single unit. The Brackendale
farms are also worked as a single unit. A farmer no longer
lives in the house on Brocker Farm. The land around it is
rented by Neil Stubbs of Wiverton Hall Farm, which is outside
the parish. James Fisher from Newton rents all the land west
of Chapel Lane. Four other farmers either own or rent four
other fields. There is one garden nursery.
Phacelia, introduced from
Germany, is grown on set-aside and used as a green manure.
In UK it cannot be cut before early July to enable honey
bees to take full advantage of it. It has been grown
on Holme Farm in Bingham.
Photo: Peter Allen
|
The main crops grown are wheat, barley,
oil seed rape and sugar beet. Onions are still grown on Starnhill
Farm, peas on Brocker Farm. Industrial oil seed rape, linseed
and Phacelia have been grown on set-aside in the last three
years. The only livestock anywhere in the parish are a few
cattle grazed on Crow Close, sheep brought in for winter grazing,
and horses. Mostly the horses are kept for private recreational
use, but at Starnhill Farm there is the Midlands Equine Therapy
Centre, which provides hydrotherapy spa treatment for horses.
The trends in farming are clearly for
the minimum viable unit to continue to increase in size and
for manpower to decrease. In 2003 Neil Stubbs, of Wiverton
Hall Farm and Brocker Farm, worked alone on 550 acres. Contrast
this with John Foster who had 500 acres in 1871 and employed
8 men and 3 boys to help him. The two Brackendale farms, which
total over 800 acres including land outside the parish are
run by three full-time men aided by one part-timer during
harvest. An interesting development is FARMECO. This company
was formed as a partnership of Holme Farm, Starnhill Farm
and two other farms outside the parish. It owns nearly all
the farm machinery and employs all the labour working on these
farms and others where they have contracts. In total they
farm over 6000 acres. The company employed four full-time
staff supplemented by an extra seven during harvest in 2003.
Not only does this arrangement drive overheads down, the economy
of size enables them to maintain the most up-to-date machinery
and utilize modern innovations such as Global Positioning
Systems (GPS) and infrared satellite imagery for determining
spray patterns for crops. The company also employs minimum
cultivation on all its land and does not plough. They were
the first in Bingham to use Phacelia as a green manure.
Information in this section has
come from many sources. To find what they are click
here. |
