Laneham

Laneham
Nottinghamshire
Main street, Laneham
Location
Grid reference:	SK804762
Location:	53°16’38"N, 0°47’41"W
Data
Population:	312  (2011)
Post town:	Retforrd
Postcode:	DN22
Dialling code:	01777
Local Government
Parliamentary constituency:	Newark

Laneham is a small Nottinghamshire village on the western bank of the tidal rreach of the River Trent, in the east of the county. It is to be found eight miles east of the nearest market town, Retford, and thirteen miles due west of the city of Lincoln across in Lincolnshire.

The population of the civil parish at the 2011 census was 312.

Churches

The Parish Church, St Peter, has parts built in the 12th, 13th, 14th and 15th centuries. It was restored in 1891, and the porch was renovated in 1932. It is a grade I listed building.

The church is the focal point of Church Laneham; it is built on a small knoll above the river and contains a large, elaborate alabaster memorial to Ellis Markham and his son Jervase, which dates from 1636.

In 1810 the church tower was rebuilt after being struck by lightning and four bells added at a cost of £800. According to a Church of England report at the time, efforts to raise funds for this locally failed 'as the parishioners are too poor.'

According to the Notts Guardian in 1865 there was a grave in the churchyard for James Penant, a blacksmith, who died on 27 May 1763, with the inscription:

My tongs and hammer I've declined

My bellows they have lost their wind

My fires extinct my forge decayed

And in the dust my vice is laid

My coals are spent my iron gone

My nails are drove my work is done.

Only a few parts of this text are still legible.

A small, disused Methodist chapel still stands in the village. A Laneham Methodist congregation was first recorded in the Society Book of the Epworth Circuit in 1799. The chapel was erected in 1834, and renovations to it were carried out in 1884.

Geography and history

The civil parish of Laneham had a total population of 279 people at the 2001 census; somewhat reduced from the 410 people who lived in the village in 1851. The parish covers an area of 1,589 acres, and includes the two settlements of "Town" Laneham and "Church" Laneham, separated by the village beck and a short stretch of low-lying ground.

The eastern boundary of the civil parish today is formed by the River Trent, although the ancient parish includes 218 acres on the opposite bank, up to the county border. Communication to the east was once easier, as a ferry crossed the river here until 1922. The ferry had a very long history, since a list of stock held by the manor in 1388 included two gangways, which were used by passengers boarding the ferry.

In earlier times the parish suffered some flooding from the Trent and the village beck, but the situation was improved by an Act of 1768–9 which set up drainage commissioners who were to protect Laneham and several other villages from flooding and improve the drainage of the land.

Periodic flooding by the Trent caused problems with the supply of fresh water for drinking from wells. This led to the unusual arrangement where wells at Church Laneham were sunk into the top of the flood bank.

Signpost in Laneham

After the inclosure of the common fields, the village prospered, and this is reflected in the substantial farmhouses and the well-ordered field system surrounding the village. Laneham was enclosed by Act of Parliament in 1772, involving 1,073 of the parish's 1,589 acres.

The village used to have three public houses: The Butchers Arms (demolished 2009–10), The Ferryboat, and The Ring o' Bells which stood on the site of the present senior citizens' bungalows. The Ferryboat Inn continues to operate as a free house in Church Laneham.

Church Laneham has two caravan sites. Manor Park which has a residential park home & holiday static caravans operating from March to the end of October. Trentfield Farm caters for Caravans, Motorhomes & Tents. This is a popular site with families with its close proximity to Lincoln, Sherwood Forest, Clumber Park and Sundown adventureland.Trentfield Farm Website

Laneham had a school in Tudor times since biographical records indicate that Gervase Markham attended it for four years before going to Cambridge. There was no school in the 1860s, when local children were having to go to Dunham, as is the case now.

Archbishop of York's Estate and Palace

The Archbishops of York held Laneham Manor from an early date, certainly by the time of the Domesday Book when 100 acres of pasture at Newton were said to belong to the Archbishop's manor. William of Laneham on the Archbishop's staff rose to a number of positions in the early 1200s, until apparently murdered in 1243, as 'some men were imprisoned at York under suspicion of being concerned in his death.'

King Henry III stayed at Laneham on 3 October 1255 and King Edward III on 15-16 April 1303.

Thomas de Corbridge, Archbishop of York, decided to spend the summer months in his residence at Laneham in July 1303 – to which he presumably travelled by water. However, while staying in the village he became ill and died on 22 September.

During the Parliamentary era in 1647 the Manor of Laneham was sold to Robert Sweete and Anthony Markeham for £647, and appear to have retained it after the Restoration.The Sandys family retained an interest in the Laneham manor for several generations and in 1663 it was held by John Sandys 'of Laneham' and Francis Sandys 'of Scrooby.' There are old references to the remains of a moat from the palace, but these were apparently ploughed out in the 1970s.

In 1842, the poverty of Laneham's former curate was reported in the news in 1842 when an income tax return was sent back from the village with the following verse attached:

There's nothing here but poverty,

Scottish rags and hunger;

If Sir Robert Peel has sent you here

Surely it was in anger.

The writer was Rev. John Irvine, a Scottish man who had taken on the curacy of both Laneham and Rampton for the 'shamefully small' stipend of £50 a year, hired by the Rector of the parish who took the income without the duties, which was common in that age. After a year or two Irvine had to give up the role at Rampton and was reduced to just the curacy in Laneham, for which he was paid just 10 shillings a week; little more than an agricultural labourer. When Laneham's rector died, Irvine felt he had a strong claim on the senior position and petitioned the patron of the benefice, the Dean and Chapter of York, for the place – without success.

Irvine then opened a parish school, from which he received a small income in fees.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Laneham)

References

• Brown, Margery Ellen (1995). Aspects of Parliamentary Enclosure in Nottinghamshire. https://lra.le.ac.uk/bitstream/2381/35536/1/U071859.pdf. 
• Charities (1828). Reports for Commissioners. House of Commons. https://books.google.com/books?id=ZTZbAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA447. 
• Hinde, K. S. G. (2006). Fenland Pumping Engines. Landmark Publishing Ltd. ISBN 978-1-84306-188-5. 
• Palmer, Robert C (1994). English Law in the Age of the Black Death. N Carolina: University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 978-0-8078-4954-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=J83HrulLqMUC&q=laneham+ferry+trent&pg=PA174. 
• Skempton, Sir Alec (2002). A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland: Vol 1: 1500 to 1830. Thomas Telford. ISBN 978-0-7277-2939-2. 
• Thirsk, Joan (1991). The Agrarian History of England and Wales: 1348–1500. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-20074-5. https://books.google.com/books?id=qQ93gEFS9PcC&pg=PA68. 
• Workgroup (2008). "Laneham Parish Plan". Laneham Parish Plan working group. http://www.endon-house.demon.co.uk/parish/Laneham%20Plan.pdf.