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HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURAL SURVEY

16 CHURCH STREET Seymour Cottage

SUMMARY

Trent & Peak Archaeology was commissioned by Bingham Heritage Trails Association in 2012 to survey Seymour Cottage, No. 16 Church Street, Bingham, a small two-storey building with extensions on its south side. It stands at the east end of Church Street, close to its junction with Cherry Street. It was examined by Nottingham Tree-Ring Dating Laboratory but its accessible timbers, being largely pine, were deemed unsuitable for dendrochronological dating. The building is not listed.

The building faces north onto Church Street, close to the town’s church. It is a small house of two storey height, brick-built with modern pantiles on its roof. It is of rectangular shape with two rooms at the front (north street-side) and three at the back that include a central two-storey stair-turret and a single storey room to either side. The building is much altered and modernized and has no early fixtures showing. Even the exposed timberwork and brickwork showing inside the building may be largely replacements or has been rebuilt.

The building was almost certainly standing in 1776 when an estate plan showed a building of similar shape on the plot. At that time is was on plot 305 which was held by William Brooks. At the time of the later Bingham tithe award of 1840 (the earliest known detailed map of the town) the house is shown with an adjoining bay at its west end, one of several structures that faced onto Cherry Street. It was then one of a group numbered 189, held by farmer John Foster. The west bay was subsequently demolished between 1835 and 1883 (Foster’s houses surviving until sometime between 1883 and 1901). Late 19th century residents were gardener Edward Coy, 49, and his family.

There is some variation in the brickwork on the west and south sides, but the predominant brickwork is composed of bricks 2¼-2? inches (57-60mm) thick and 9¼-9½ ins (235-241mm) long. This is laid in Flemish stretcher bond on the street frontage only, with the other walls being irregularly coursed. The brickwork suggests a likely date of construction in the early-mid 18th century.

The external structural evidence suggests that the building was built with all five ground-floor rooms and not as a T-shaped structure with the stair turret standing out at the back, and with the rooms to either side added later. What is less clear is whether much of the west wall may have been pre-existing and was at the back of a possibly 17Th century building facing onto Cherry Street. Although most of the lower brickwork of the west wall has been rebuilt, the earlier brickwork above it contains straight joints and is not coursed into the street frontage’s brickwork at the north-west corner of the building. This is not the case at the north-east corner.

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