Besthorpe, Nottinghamshire

Besthorpe
Nottinghamshire
The old Chapel and Chapel Cottage at Besthorpe
Location
Grid reference:	SK825647
Location:	53°6’6"N, 0°27’43"W
Data
Population:	195  (2011)
Post town:	Newark-on-Trent
Postcode:	NG23
Local Government
Council:	Newark and Sherwood
Parliamentary constituency:	Newark-on-Trent

Besthorpe is a small village in north-east Nottinghamshire close to the border with Lincolnshire. The population of the civil parish as of the 2011 census is 195.

The village is on the A1133 between Newark on Trent and Gainsborough, and is a mile and a half north of the larger village of Collingham, north-east of Newark. The village stands a mile east of the River Trent and the River Fleet flows south to east parallel with the village & A1133. Besthorpe acquired Conservation Village status in 2006 because it has maintained much of its original layout focused on Low Road and the Green.

Name

Besthorpe's name is derived from the Scandinavian word ‘thorpe’ meaning outlying farmstead or hamlet and probably the name of a key character called something like ‘Bosi’. It indicates that there was sufficient settlement here in the period of the Danelaw in the 10th century to give the place a name. Parishes and their boundaries were to be well established by the time of the Domesday Book in 1086.

History

Prehistory

Palaeolithic (Old Stone Age) hunter-gatherers are known to have occupied caves at Creswell Crags on the Notts/Derbys border near Worksop for thousands of years down to 10,000 BC. By this time they used a distinctive range of flint and stone tools examples of which have been found at Farndon – possibly a temporary summer hunting camp.

By the later stages of the Iron Age (1st century BC) and into the Roman Period (after 43 AD) a sizeable community had established itself at Ferry Lane Farm between Collingham and Besthorpe. Excavations by Manchester and Salford Universities took place for several summers until 2012. Though there is no suggestion of any significant material wealth, the site revealed a well-ordered system of rectilinear fields, closely spaced enclosures and trackways supporting theories of a relative increase in population densities. Similar sites have been recorded by aerial photography.

Along the east side of the Valley were a range of farmstead settlements, which would have had links with the Roman road system (the Fosse Way) and traded to a degree with the ‘small town’ at Crococalana (Brough) and the larger urban centre of Lindum (Lincoln).

At Meering there are suggestions of possible pottery kilns and a hoard of 1,347 Roman coins was found in 1964 by workers in the gravel pits at Besthorpe. Study of the coins which had been crammed into a pot showed that the dateable sequence ended abruptly in 354. A first century AD pot was discovered in a house foundation trench at Trent Lane.

The current Victorian church was built in 1844 to replace a Chapel of Ease which was built about 1535AD and fell into disuse after 1760. The stone foundations of the east end of this stone chapel were located during the redevelopment of the church for the Besthorpe Project in 2013.

At Mill Farm are the remains of a Windmill, consisting of the oak post, quarter bars and cross trees of a Post mill inside a brick roundhouse, now used as a store. Besthorpe Mill was built c. 1832, and ceased working by 1909 although the sails and machinery remained intact until at least the 1930s. In 1899 the miller Charles Merriman committed suicide inside the mill by cutting his throat. According to a tenant, Ron Wilkinson, who moved into the mill house in the 1930s the roundhouse floorboards were bloodstained. They were later concreted over.

Holy Trinity Church, Besthorpe

The parish church, Holy Trinity, was built in 1844 to replace an old Chapel of Ease built circa 1535, for St Helena's Church, South Scarle and which fell into ruins in 1760. There is evidence that it was dismantled between 1760 and 1770 with various mentions of the sale of bells and bell ropes to South Scarle.

A school was built from the ruins of the church and completed in 1734. “ Its [the church's] alteration into a school house is thought to have been affected about AD 1734. That such a transformation did take place is testified by a pillar of the old church which has been built into an inner wall of the school master's dwelling" The school was established under the will of George Carver, who in 1709 bequeathed an annual sum of £5 for educating the poor children of Besthorpe. This information is shown on the stone which was set into the new school building in 1845 and remains in place today.

In 1844, part of the land on which the school stood was transferred to form the site of the new chapel. There is evidence that the church was partly rebuilt in 1897 at a cost of £215.

The church is unusual in that it is aligned north to south with the altar being at the south end in the apse.

The Church and Boundary Wall are Grade II listed

Hide at Besthorpe Nature Reserve

About the village

Two key environments meet in Besthorpe. To the north and east the East Nottinghamshire Sandlands are an increasingly rare habitat supporting grass heaths, bracken, gorse and broom with mixed small-scale plantations of birch, oak and Scots pine. The River Fleet and the fields to the west are part of the Trent Washlands which provide the village with its River Meadowlands landscape of meadow and river pastures, extensive grasslands and meandering river channels.

The Millennium Wood, alongside the A1133, was planted originally in 2000 and bluebells were added to mark the Diamond Jubilee in 2012. A current clearance project aims to keep this Wood accessible for leisure use.

The Besthorpe Nature Reserve was created by the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust over many years, by reworking old sand and gravel quarries into a nature reserve (officially opened in June 2011) and over 100 species of birds have been recorded including key colonies of tree-nesting great cormorants, a major heronry and sand martins. In 2013 a number of little egrets raised their chicks here – at the time considered to be the most northerly such colony in the UK. .

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Besthorpe, Nottinghamshire)