HISTORICAL ARCHITECTURAL SURVEY
PARRS CLOSE, 19 CHURCH STREET, BINGHAM
SUMMARY
Parr’s Close, No. 21 Church Street, Bingham, a double pile plan two-storey house. It stands at the east end of Church Street, facing south towards the Street’s junction with Cherry Street. The building is not listed. It was examined by Nottingham Tree-Ring Dating Laboratory which found two early timbers from 1309 reused in the roof.
The building is largely brick-built with modern pantiles on its roof. It is of an irregular rectangular shape composed of two adjoining ranges, with two rooms in the front part (south street-side) and four in the rear range. The building is much altered and modernized and has no early fixtures showing. Although there is timberwork on show in the rear section, some exposed brick walling may have been largely rebuilt to allow for a moved back entrance.
The earlier north part of the building was almost certainly standing in 1776 at the time of an estate survey. It was then on a plot numbered 338, described as a house, garden and Home Close held by John Lee. Lee operated the mill at Tithby Road and the house was probably the tied cottage for the estate’s miller. At the time of the later Bingham tithe award of 1840 the house was its present size and was then held by another miller, William Hemstock. The Hemstocks had gone by 1871 and who then occupied the house is unclear. It is possible that coal dealer Anthony Nicholson and his family were there in 1901 and again in 1911.
The plan and the brickwork indicate a building of at least two phases of construction – the north range first, probably in the mid-18th century, with the south range added in the earlier part of the 19th century. The north range is of almost identical size to nearby Seymour Cottage, No. 16 Church Street, and like this building has an angled side wall. It does, however, lack a projecting stair turret and unlike Seymour Cottage the north part was set back from the road. It may well be on the site of a yet earlier structure, some timbers from which were reused in its roof. Several other buildings in Bingham with suspected early originals appear to have been built away from the street frontage.
The north range was a small house /cottage, probably with a through-passage and an internal stair / stairway, whose position is now lost. Most of the upper part of this building was rebuilt and the roofing relocated with the south range having a roof that sloped back over the earlier part. The southern extension added two formal rooms, two bedrooms, a replacement staircase and a smart frontage with chequerboard brickwork, and openings with stone dressings. It then became one of the larger houses on Church Street.
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