Past mysteries are revealed
Investigations into a medieval settlement in Bingham also unearthed something a little more modern — a second world war searchlight.
Bingham Heritage Trails Association has spent nearly four years researching the site off Crow Close.
The results of all the surveys carried out by members and other organisations on its behalf will be included in a report that is due to be published early next year.
Crow Close was one of the first deserted medieval villages to be recorded in England.
It is a scheduled monument, protected from development by English Heritage.
No one knows why the village became deserted so the association hopes its research will help move closer to solving the mystery.
English Heritage and the landowners, Southwell diocese, gave permission for topographical and geophysical surveys of the field to try to help the group to understand what the village was like.
The topographical survey, which uses a laser scanner to pick up variations in the level of the ground was carried out by 3D Laser Mapping Ltd of Bingham in 2005.
It mapped out the boundaries and field system on Crow Close.
The results allowed for a more detailed geophysical survey — where electronic signals are sent into the earth to build up a picture of what is below the surface — to be carried out by Grid Nine of Grantham in April.
The recently released results appear to show a road running through the settlement, field boundaries, a possible village green and potential sites of six homes.
Also visible is the second world war searchlight, with a diameter of 21 metres, that would have been used to light up Luftwaffe bombers for the anti-aircraft batteries.
Mr Peter Allen, the association’s chairman, said it was purely by chance that the wartime installations were discovered.
He said: “The searchlight is visible on the ground as a low mound 21 metres in diameter, but there is a magnetic ring-like anomaly four metres in diameter in the centre. The shape of both this and the mound seems to be either octagonal or hexagonal rather than circular.”
Mr Allen said the findings conformed to the standard design for searchlight units that were built in the late 1930s to form defensive rings around all British towns in the event of war.
He said the magnetic anomaly marks were where the corrugated iron sheeting was placed to hold back the defensive ring of earth around the central sunken area where the searchlight unit would have been placed.
The sunken area was drained by a pipe to stop it flooding in rain and the drain pipe, in this case, was made of iron so is visible as a magnetic anomaly.
While doing research into world war two installations in Nottinghamshire, Mrs Margaret Sibley of Orchard Avenue, Bingham, found that in November 1941, the order went out for personnel working all searchlight units to be protected by a slit trench where they could take refuge during an air attack.
Mr Allen said: “We have found the one dug near this unit by a combination of magnetic and resistance anomalies. It seems to run into another octagonal structure that is smaller than the main one as though it was a service trench to it.”
He said they were not sure what it was because there is no record or memory of a gun emplacement at this site, so it could be second searchlight unit.
Mrs Bridie Gilchrest (80) of St Mary’s Road, Bingham, remembers the small base on Crow Close and helped the association with their research.
She used to take food to the few men based on the site with her aunts.
She remembers taking dishes of jugged hare, a type of stew.
She also remembers the light being used at night and that there were Nissen huts in the field during the war.
Surveys showed areas of buried rubble or concrete that could be the bases of the huts.
Information provided by Mrs Gilchrest has been put on to CD.
Mr Allen said it was remarkable that there were so few records of many wartime installations in this country.
He said: “Now that many survivors of the war are getting old, researchers interested in the period are increasingly having to rely on archaeological research methods to find out about them.
“We were lucky to have found Mrs Gilchrist, who remembered what had happened in this field in the 1940s and helped us understand what the geophysics was showing us.”
Mr Allen is now compiling a report of the information from the Crow Close investigations.
The site’s second world war connections will not be explored further because it is not a period of speciality for the association.
However, the question of why Bingham’s medieval settlement became deserted remains unanswered and will continue to be investigated.
