Cropwell Bishop

The trees have obviously grown since the road sign was painted but everything else seemed to have remained the same on the day we visited ... even down to the brown horse being ridden down the road (no, it isn't in the photo but it was there as you will see!).

 Cropwell Bishop has grown quite considerably in recent times:  there was a population of 300 in the census of 1801 which had risen to 650 by 1850.  Today there are over 2000 residents.  It is a popular place to live: it is an attractive village with a rural setting but it is conveniently close to road and rail links. The increased population has changed the structure of the village though.  In the 1800s it was a self-contained place with the census listing such occupations as miller, dressmaker, tailor, shoemaker, lace-maker, carpenter, bricklayer, butcher, plumber, farmer and publican. Within living memory there were ten working farms in and around the place.  Gypsum was mined nearby and the Grantham canal was a busy route as it passed by the village.  Many of the houses in West Bridgford were constructed from bricks made at the Cropwell Bishop brick works then transported to Bridgford by canal boats. 
Well, the gypsum works have gone, the canal is quiet and the barns have become homes or business premises. Two large housing estates were built during the 1950s and more new building has occured since. Today the Co-op seemed to be doing a roaring trade and three public houses serve the population.  When the gypsum works were in operation there were five pubs ... the Canal Inn and the Plough and Harrow have long gone.

The Wheatsheaf is a 400 year old coaching inn; The Chequers which is ungoing a facelift and, just outside the village is The Lime Kiln. Legend has it Dick Turpin stayed in one of these establishments .... someone else who appreciated the close proximity to local road routes!

  Another old building which is no longer in existance was to be found on Mill Lane ... a steam mill that dramatically collapsed in 1910 when the steam engine blew up.  A second mill had been located at the top of Fern Hill.  This mill was mentioned in documents dating back to 1686.  Unfortunately that mill blew down in a gale in 1849 but it was rebuilt and working again two years later.  There is no sign of it now.

 As you drive into Cropwell Bishop the road sign tells you the village is famous for Stilton Cheese.  Our first stop had to be the cheese shop.

The Cropwell Bishop Creamery is a great little place.  I was imagining a small cheese counter in the warehouse but no, it is a proper shop displaying jars of jams, pickles, fruits and curds; cheese biscuits and waffers; cheese boards and cheese knives .... and a whole selection of cheeses.  Now I do not like cheese ... never have done ... I try it every so often but always pull a face and ask for a drink so it came as a real surprise to find their Fig and Orange Stilton is delicious!! The lovely shop assistant, Sarah, was cutting a piece as I was perusing their interesting recipe cards when the delightful smell of oranges tempted me to sample a bit.  I was converted.  The piece we bought didn't last long when we got it home (nor did the Stilton with Blueberry) so now we have to go back.  Right, sales pitch over!  (Really is worth a visit though!)

Down the road in the centre of the village is St Giles Church.  Apparently there are under-ground tunnels under the church after a Reverend Dobbin had a house built incorporating a passage between the buildings. Why he needed an underground tunnel to connect his house to the church is anyone's guess.

Parts of this building date back to the 13th century.  Inside the porch "TB" carefully carved the ceiling beam with the date on 27th August 1608! I love things like that!

Inside was another treat .... the ancient oak pews had inticate poppy carved heads and had been cut to fit round the stout pillars.  Brilliant!




Near the altar we found slate gravestones (one by Wood of Bingham) that still had the gold inlaid into the carvings.  All the ones I have seen so far have been outside so the gold had gone: these revealed how beautiful the stones would have looked when they were new.

Judging by the number of names on the brass war memorial Cropwell Bishop played its part in both World Wars.  The War Memorial Hall was built in the village and opened in 1932 by the Prince of Wales (who would later become King Edward VIII).

One on the First World War soldiers who died was Frank Wood, the son of the vicar.  Frank was a subaltern in the Sherwood Foresters attached to the Machine Gun Company.  He was badly injured at Passchendaele on 4th October 1917 and, sadly, died on 23rd October.  There is a plaque to his memory and a stained glass window commemorates the others who gave their lives.

 Someone else connected to the village who lost his life too early is Henry Norreys.  King Henry VIII granted the manor of Cropwell Bishop (together with Stoke Bardolph, Gedling, Newton and Carlton) to Sir Edward Norreys.  Henry Norreys inherited the manor from Edward.  Henry was a favourite of the King and was granted positions at Court and grants of more land.  Unfortunately for him he was a favourite of Anne Boleyn too! Norreys had been an admirer of Anne before she met the King so the two were always close.  On the 1st of May 1536 the royal couple were attending a jousting match in which Norreys was competing.  Anne dropped a handkerchief, Norreys picked it up and kept it.  King Henry was far from happy and immediately left the tournament.  Henry Norris was arrested and executed along with Anne's brother and three other courtiers for high treason, all accused of adultery with the Queen. His lands reverted back to the Crown and were later granted to Lady Anne Stanhope of Shelford.  Modern historians believe the accusations were false ... just a way of Henry getting rid of Anne because he had met Jane Seymour. 

According to Wikipedia 'Queen Elizabeth I always honoured his memory, believing that he died "in a noble cause and in the justification of her mother's innocence".'

 Next to the church is the old school house: a Board School built in 1878 after the Elementary Education Act of 1870 which was the beginning of state education.  Compulsory education began in 1880 (but truancy was a major issue as it meant children had to give up work!). The village children attended school here until the 1960s.  This building is now used as a Community Building where a wealth of meetings take place each week ... Gardening and Allotment clubs: Mother & Baby; Cinema Club; Youth Club; Bridge Club and Zumba to name a few.  There is no shortage of community spirit here.

 We wandered off down the road towards the old Manor when we stopped to photograph a beautiful brown horse at the livery yard.

The yard belongs to Jon Barlow and the sign on the gate said "horse breaking".  He very kindly explained his job to us: you can't just throw a saddle on a young animal .... an awful lot of time, dedication and attention to detail is needed to prepare a really good riding horse. They breed, train and sell horses at the stable.  Jon took us to see this beautiful four day old foal.

Just look at those long legs!  The father is a German showjumping champion called Chaman .... not just any old horse .... this is one of Germany's elite!  Who knows, this little foal could be an Olympic medalist of the future!

The Barlow family have long been connected to the village.  I found this post on the BBC website from 1986: 

"The Cropwell Bishop stables are situated on the main road quite near Mill Hill. They stable Hunters, and the hunt meets at Cropwell Bishop every year. Prince Charles once rode in it .The stables are owned by Mr.Tom Barlow who was invited to the wedding of His Royal Highness Prince Charles to Lady Diana Spencer.  Prince Charles wanted to buy Mr. Barlow's horse, Lulu, but Mr. Barlow wanted to keep it."

Thomas David Barlow was Mayor of Rushcliffe 2001 - 2002.  He had the inspired idea of sending out organ donor cards with the electoral register forms .... 13,000 residents were added to the organ donor register!

We thanked the family for an interesting visit and continued up to the old manor house.

 One of nine listed buildings in the village ... the others are cottages (one of which is a black and white timber framed Tudor cottage on Fern Road); St Giles Church; the Methodist Chapel and the Wheatsheaf pub.

We met some interesting, friendly people during our visit.  The village is bigger than most we have visited so far but it maintains its 'country' feel.  Numerous Public Footpath signs point the way into the surrounding fields and horses are ridden through the streets.  It stands out from the other villages by having more than one pub still in business ... we will be visiting again .... not just for the cheese.

The Lime Kiln - Just outside Cropwell Bishop

This is the first village that we have visited to boast three pubs within its boundaries. Needless to say I had to revisit to try them all. Stop number one was the Lime Kiln which is some way out of Cropwell Bishop if truth be told. It was a fine sunny afternoon when we visited and so we took full advantage of the garden - a well-kept and commodious affair! Unfortunately this pub keeps no real ales and there are no hand-pumped beers. If you want a real ale you have to buy a bottle. Instead I plumped for the keg Bombardier.I was pleasantly surprised!

Cheers!

Map of Cropwell Bishop: click here.

Cropwell Butler

A painterly view of the village from the Village Hall

This is a really attractive village filled with lovely red brick houses, flower filled gardens, grass verges and mature trees.

Cropwell Butler: Village sign

The village was originally named Crophill Botiller.  Crophill because of the hill we now call Hoe Hill, and Botiller came from the name of the Lord of the Manor in the 1150s, Richard le Boteler (we met him previously at Tythby .... Richard was butler to the Earl of Chester.  He obviously did a great job because the Earl acquired the land here and gave it to Richard who then married Beatrix de Villiers in 1154.  He became the fourth Baron of Warrington once Beatrix's father had died).

Cropwell Butler: Street view

 At the beginning of the 17th century a plot of land in the village was purchased by Thomas Smith.  His son (also Thomas) became a successful mercer (he dealt in cloth) and bought a house in Nottingham. He arranged for local traders to safely keep cash at these premises for a fee.  This was the beginnings of Smith's Bank, the first bank to be formed outside of London.  The Nat West Bank in Old Market Square, Nottingham, still has the name of Smith's Bank on its nameplate.  Over the years the Smiths would grow in wealth and influence before becoming the Bromley baronets (we came across these at East Stoke).

Cropwell Butler: Village green

Cropwell Butler: The Court

This beautiful listed building is called The Court.  It was built in the 19th century and has a dovecote and stables in the grounds.  Some of the extensive gardens have been sold for development in recent years but the new houses have been designed to blend in very well.

I was particularly taken with the ring for tethering your horse attached to the wall at The Court .... very Victorian!

Cropwell Butler: The Court

Cropwell Butler: Street view

This is the first village we have visited that does not have an old church. This is rather surprising given the age of the place (it began in the 1st century as a spinal village off the Fosse Way).   Well, there was a medieval chuch here at one time .... it was dedicated to St Nicholas but it was destroyed at the time of the Dissolution.

Cropwell Butler: Methodist Chapel

The village has a Methodist Chapel.  The building is dated 1903 but the congregation dates their history back much further .... it began in 1773 when Thomas Innocent applied to register his home as a dissenting meeting house.

Cropwell Butler: Chapel House

Cropwell Butler: Street view

 Unlike an awful lot of the other villages we have visited this one actually has a pub!

Cropwell Butler: The Plough

The Plough has a warm, cosy interior, friendly staff and good beer.  There seems to be lots going on at the pub if the notice board outside is anything to go by and it is certainly a place we will be visiting again.

Cropwell Butler: Pub sign

A little further down the road is the Village Hall which was converted from the old school building in 1970.  Here residents meet up for clubs and activities all adding to the community spirit of the place. 

Cropwell Butler: Village Hall

Behind the Village Hall, just beyond the children's play area, is the Sheldon Field. This is a brilliant village amenity.  The notice board tells you all about it but basically in 1995 a teenage boy wanted to set up a football team so his father rented a field from a local farmer so the dream could become a reality. The field was eventually purchased and, following the early death of the boy's father (David Shaw ) the villagers have taken it over.  A great, if somewhat sad, story of how a good community can work.

Cropwell Butler:  Sheldon Field notice board

Cropwell Butler: Street view

A lot of people in Nottingham during the Second World War might have been extremely grateful to this good community if they had known what the village had done.

After the bombing of Coventry Colonel John Turner was given the task of trying to prevent other cities being hit in the same way.  He came up with the idea of setting up fires and lights to look like cities from the air.  These were called Starfish Sites.  There were over 200 of them across the country designed to protect 81 cities and one was located very near to Cropwell Butler.

Just after midnight on May 8th/9th 1941 ninety-five German bombers set off to destroy targets in Nottingham and Derby.  The first wave hit a few sites in Nottingham but the fires were very quickly dealt with by the fire brigade while a few miles away the Starfish site was ignited.  The following waves of bombers believed this brightly lit area was the target as in the dark tanks of burning oil looked like bombed buildings.  The intended targets had included the Royal Ordinance Factory, Raleigh and the Rolls Royce Works.  Many lives were saved as the bombs landed on fields.

Cropwell Butler

Cropwell Butler

Cheers!

 Map of Cropwell Butler: click here.

*  History of Cropwell Butler's Methodist Chapel:  click here.

Tythby (or Tithby)

Picture a small group of farms surrounding a church, place them on a crossroad in the middle of Nottinghamshire fields and you have Tythby.

Tythby street view

It seems to be a place that modern developers have passed by and yet this is the final resting place of a man who was knighted for building literally thousands of new houses and improving the lives of the Nottinghamshire working classes.

Sir William Crane was elected as Chairman of the Notts Housing Committee in 1919.  Over the next 38 years he pushed forward with plans to demolish old slum housing and move the inhabitants into brand new council houses in Aspley, Bilborough, Broxtowe and Strelley. People were overjoyed to have spacious homes with indoor bathrooms in a more salubrious environment. He didn't just give them a new house: he gave them a healthier life.

There is a window dedicated to the memory of Crane's mother inside the church.

The only other stained glass in the church is behind the altar:

This one has a strange mark in the corner.  It is similar to the Belvoir Angel engravings found on 18th century slate gravestones but this is in fact the maker's signature ... Pope & Parr of Nottingham.

The window was erected in 1955 to the memory of the parents of James and Mary Butler Smith.  Now this has echoes of a connection to one of Tythby's earliest patrons:  Matthew de Villiers, the Baron of Warrington, who gave Tithby Church to Thurgaton Priory in the 12th century.  Matthew Villiers's daughter and heir was Beatrix de Villiers who married Richard le Boteler in 1155 when she was about 15 years of age.  Her husband held the post of Butler to the Earl of Chester (this was a very powerful position at the time, not a servant's post as we tend to regard it today).  Beatrix and Richard's heirs would rule the region of Warrington for many generations and took the surname 'le Boteler' or Butler.

Beatrix cousin was also called Beatrix de Villiers but her marriage was far from happy right from the beginning.  It has been reported that she was the 'Morganatic wife' of King John (a marriage where the wife and offspring have no rights to the higher ranking person's title or property), however this could be an over-exaggeration ... King John was a bit of a lech by all accounts*.  In any case,  Beatrix was in love with the King but the feeling was not reciprocated as he gave her away in marriage to Sir Robert Molyneux. The Molyneux family history books record that " She bitterly cursed the House of Molyneux and all that bore the name, calling down maledictions of misery, blasting their loves with tragedy."  

Now there is a small problem with this family history .... this Beatrix de Villiers was the daughter of Robert de Villiers, grand daughter of Paganus de Villiers; she was born in 1138; she married Robert Molyneux in 1158, she had fours sons to Robert and died in 1165 at the age of 27).  All well and good so far .... the problem lies in the fact that King John wasn't born until 1166!  I spent ages searching for a younger Beatrix de Villiers (or Beatrice de Villiers) but found nothing.

Holy Trinity Church, Tythby

At the centre of Tythby is the rather plain looking Church of the Holy Trinity.  It is an odd mix of stone and red brick and plain and ornate windows. The roof of the tower is nick-named the Tythby Dovecote. Inside it is packed with shining dark wood box pews.

Church box pews

The oldest memorial inside the church is dedicated to Thomas Chaworth (1452 - 1485), grandson of the Sir Thomas Chaworth we wrote about at Wiverton Hall (he was the wealthiest man in Nottinghamshire and died at the Hall in 1459).

A more recent memorial is to the memory of 23 year old Flight Lieutenant Graham, son of Major General Sir Miles Graham who was also a resident of Wiverton Hall. This young man was part of the 617 Dambusters Squadron who took off from Woodhall Spa on 23rd September 1944 to breach the Dortmund Ems Kanal near Munster.  They failed to bomb the target and were returning home when they were attacked by a German fighter plane.  They lost three engines and had to bail out when a fire broke out in the fully loaded bomb bay.

The Latin Dulce et Decorum est pro patria Mori is recognisable to most Post First World War readers because of Wilfred Owen's famous poem.  Owen was using the phrase to show it was definitely not sweet and glorious to die for one's country.  Knowing Major Graham's military record I think he would disagree with the poet.

Georgian Royal Coat of Arms

Outside the church are a goodly number of slate gravestones by Wood of Bingham (who I recently discovered lived in the house that is now the Pizza place in Union Street, Bingham) and Sparrow.  I read about one of the old grave inscriptions recorded in Arthur Mee's The King's England: Nottinghamshire so I went all round the graves looking for it.  It relates to a 94 year old man called John Marriott who died in 1866.  His wife, Mary, also 94, died a year later and the inscription is on her tomb:

" He first deceased her, she a little tried

To live without him, liked it not, and died."

It made me smile ... in a sort of sad way of course!  I looked all over but failed to find the right grave although there were quite a few belonging to the Marriott family.  Some were badly weathered though.

Marriott charity sign

And here we have a John Marriott giving bread money for the poor.  Members of the Fillingham family had set up a similar arrangement at the end of the 1700s (we met the Fillinghams at Syerston). According to the church entry in the Southwell Church Project website the bread is still distributed every Christmas morning as stipulated.

The church fittings include this beautiful large heavy key ( ten inches in length and weighing 1lb 6oz) and iron candle holders made by Jesse Goodband, the last Tythby blacksmith.

Church key

Wall candle holders

We were really surprised at the large number of cars travelling through here.  It is a tiny place, not on a main road, with no shops and no pub so we had imagined there would be quiet roads.  How wrong we were.

One of the land marks of the village is this wonderful AA road sign at the central cross roads:

AA street sign

 I think it is this, and the lovely old fashioned street lamps dotted around the village, that add to the 1930s feel of the place!

Cross roads street sign

* Well back to King John. As evidence for my statement that he was lecherous I give you the following quotation: "John is given a great taste for lechery by the chroniclers of his age, and even allowing some embellishment, he did have many illegitimate children. Matthew Paris accuses him of being envious of many of his barons and kinsfolk, and seducing their more attractive daughters and sisters. Roger of Wendover describes an incident that occurred when John became enamoured of Margaret, the wife of Eustace de Vesci and an illegitimate daughter of King William I of Scotland . Eustace substituted a prostitute in her place when the king came to Margaret's bed in the dark of night; the next morning, when John boasted to Vesci of how good his wife was in bed, Vesci confessed and fled." Source

The article goes on to list twelve illegitimate children (ten of whom went by the name of 'Fitz Roy' which is Norman-French for Son of the King.)   
 

Victorian post box

Map of Tythby: click here.