Bingfield is a village and former civil parish, now in the parish of

Whittington Whittington may refer to: Places * Whittington, Victoria, Australia * Whittington, Illinois, United States England * Old Whittington, Derbyshire * New Whittington, Derbyshire * Whittington Moor, Derbyshire * Whittington, Gloucestershire * Whitti ...

, in Northumberland, in England. It is situated to the north of Corbridge, off the A68 road and includes some properties situated on the A68 ( Dere Street). In 1951 the parish had a population of 76.

Governance

Bingfield is in the parliamentary constituency of

Hexham Hexham ( ) is a market town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in Northumberland, England, on the south bank of the River Tyne, formed by the confluence of the North Tyne and the South Tyne at Warden, Northumberland, Warden nearby, and ...

. Bingfield was formerly a township in

St. John-Lee ST, St, or St. may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Stanza, in poetry * Suicidal Tendencies, an American heavy metal/hardcore punk band * Star Trek, a science-fiction media franchise * Summa Theologica, a compendium of Catholic philosophy ...

parish, from 1866 Bingfield was a civil parish in its own right until it was abolished on 1 April 1955 and merged with Whittington.

History

Bingfield was an ancient

settlement Settlement may refer to: *Human settlement, a community where people live *Settlement (structural), the distortion or disruption of parts of a building *Closing (real estate), the final step in executing a real estate transaction *Settlement (fina ...

. There are the remains of an ancient medieval village in the field in front of the church, uncovered during an oil excavation. Most of the buildings in Bingfield date to the early 19th century. There were probably four farms, a school, and a church which dates to the late 18th/early 19th century. The church and school were also used by residents of neighbouring Hallington, which had neither of its own. Bingfield remained largely unchanged from the mid 19th century until after the Second World War, when mechanisation brought significant change to the farming industry. Since the 1970s there was a period of farmers selling off redundant farm buildings to be converted into houses.

Bingfield Hall

Bingfield Hall was in the hands of the Story family for many years. John Story of Bingfield Hall (1648-1725) emigrated to Ireland and settled as a major landowner at Corick House, near Clogher, County Tyrone. In 1745, his descendant Joseph Story, Archdeacon of Kilmore Cathedral, built a house there called Bingfield. Genealogical records of the Northumberland Storys survive from the 17th and 18th centuries, but Bingfield Hall is long demolished and replaced by a farmhouse, now also in ruins. No trace of the Hall or memory of the family remained by 1895.

Bingfield Combe Cottage

Bingfield Combe Cottage was built in around 1830 to store carts and farm machinery such as

plough A plough or plow ( US; both ) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or ...

s for Bingfield farm, about one mile away at the bottom of the hill, which is now two separately-owned farms. The stone was probably sourced from the quarry along the ridge, although some have claimed that actual stones were removed from

Hadrian's Wall Hadrian's Wall ( la, Vallum Aelium), also known as the Roman Wall, Picts' Wall, or ''Vallum Hadriani'' in Latin, is a former defensive fortification of the Roman province of Britannia, begun in AD 122 in the reign of the Emperor Hadrian. R ...

, less than three miles (5 km) to the south from Bingfield. As well as the cottage, there were two other buildings used to support the farm. The next-door house, then a barn, was for stabling horses and cattle, and the house behind the cottage was the gin gang, a large room for grinding

corn Maize ( ; ''Zea mays'' subsp. ''mays'', from es, maíz after tnq, mahiz), also known as corn (North American and Australian English), is a cereal grain first domesticated by indigenous peoples in southern Mexico about 10,000 years ago. Th ...

. A horse was hooked up to a gear system which operated grinding stones powered by a horse walking round the room. It is supposed that these buildings were built uphill away from the farm to save the farmer transporting equipment up and down the hill in the days before mechanization (tractors).

References

External links