Long Acre, Bingham

Wow! What a rarity! – classic period homes with plenty of history seldom appear on the market in Bingham! However, when they do, interest is always intense; especially when they are ripe for someone with imagination and flair to create a beautiful family home with a sympathetic scheme of modernisation and upgrading. There are high ceilings and plenty of character with many original stained floorboards still in place. This is very much a blank canvas for the right buyer. The property is being offered with NO CHAIN and possible historic links to the discovery of Tutankhamun!

This Victorian semi-detached residence boasts a delightful position overlooking the St Mary’s Church to the rear and the neat green of the Bowling Club to the front as well as Warner’s Paddock.

Ideally positioned being only a couple of minutes’ walk of Bingham Market Place with its range of shops. Carnarvon, Robert Miles and Toothill Schools catering for all school age groups are also extremely popular and highly regarded due to their Ofsted reports.

For the busy executive, the upgraded A46 & A52 are close at hand providing access to the surrounding commercial centres of Nottingham, Newark, Leicester and Grantham.

Bingham enjoys a wonderful range of supermarkets and independent shops, eateries, coffee house, public houses with a market held every Thursday. There is also a medical centre, pharmacies, dentists, leisure centre and a library. Should a shopping trip to the larger towns be the ‘order of the day’ Bingham has direct rail links to Nottingham and Grantham and bus routes to Nottingham and the surrounding villages.

Bingham is on the edge of the renowned Vale of Belvoir which provides endless hours of walks as well as a variety of quaint rural villages, each with their own individual character and many with a village pub!

Without doubt this is a home which demands an early internal inspection if period charm and character is your particular requirement – why not see it this weekend?

Approached over a patterned and tiled floor to the

Covered Porch - with an orignal boot-scaper to the front, a half glazed entrance door leads into the

Reception Hall - 3.96m long (13'0 long ) - with stairs to the first floor and a central heating radiator. Original door into

Large Lounge - 5.03m x 3.73m (16'6 x 12'3) - Central heating radiator. Ceiling cornicing. Feature bay window to the front and an open fire.

Dining Room - 3.81m x 3.81m (12'6 x 12'6) - with a central heating radiator. Feature fireplace and a sash window to the rear.

Kitchen - 3.51m x 3.05m (11'6 x 10'0) - With an original door leading to the rear and a window to the side elevation. Useful under-stairs cupboard. Central heating radiator. Door to the

Utility Lobby - 2.74m x 1.63m (9'0 x 5'4) - with ample storage space, a double glazed window to the rear garden and door to the outside as well as a wall mounted gas fired boiler. Door to the

Cloakroom - with storage cupboard, a double glazed window to the rear garden, a low flush W.C. and a wall mounted wash hand basin.

Landing - 3.81m x 2.82m (12'6 x 9'3) - from the hallway, there are stairs to the first floor with carved spindles, turned handrail and a central heating radiator. An original door leads to the staircase and the second floor.

Bedroom One - 4.88m x 4.11m (16'0 x 13'6) - with sash-effect windows with views out over the Bowling Club and Warner's Paddock. Central heating radiator.

Bathroom - 3.35m x 3.05m (11'0 x 10'0) - with a panelled bath featuring a Victorian style tap and an electric shower over with screen, a pedestal wash basin with a low flush W.C., airing cupboard and a rear window overlooking both the rear garden and the steeple of St Mary's Church.

Bedroom Two - 3.81m x 2.84m (12'6 x 9'4) - with sash window that looks out towards the steeple of St Mary's Church. Central heating radiator.

On The Second Floor - From the first floor landing, a turned staircase leads to the

The Very Versatile Room - Bedroom 3 - 6.02m x 4.93m (19'9 x 16'2) - with access to the very versatile and large area which could easily be converted with the insertion of partition walls to create a bedroom with an en-suite shower room, a bedroom with a separate study or work from home office, or a playroom / games room... the options are numerous... you decide what to create! Large window to the front with extensive views across the Bowling Club. Feature original fireplace.

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Outside - Front - An imposing and charming looking, to the fore of which is a driveway providing off-street parking behind a retaining wall and railing. A side pathway and gate leads to the rear garden.

Outside - Rear - An Olde English style garden which includes a lawn and patio area, brick outhouse, planting area as well as a view of the steeple of St Mary's Church. The g arden is fully enclosed with original walls and mature shrubbery. Sensibly, an outside tap has been thoughtfully provided.

Reproduced with kind permission from The Bingham Heritage Trails Association -

Porchester Terrace is nowadays more prosaically known now as numbers 71 to 85 Long Acre, having in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries been known as Porchester Terrace or, later, Porchester Villas.

It is a row of four pairs of semi-detached two storey houses with alternate pairs having, probably original, dormer windows protruding from the roof at the front; each of the others has more modern skylights. All display an attractive frieze of vertical ‘dog toothed’ brickwork just below eaves level, blue brick ornamentation and a quite exotic boot scraper set into the wall next to the front door. Each villa used to have a Minton tiled hallway floor- we know of only one that has now - and a Minton tiled lobby floor (four or five still have).

The houses were built by James Walker of Bingham and Thomas Forrest Enerby of East Bridgford between 1882 and about 1885. Numbers 71/3 and 75/7 are earlier than 79/81 and 83/85; they are on the 1883 map whereas the other pair are not. They are built on land leased in 1882 to Walker and Enerby by the fifth Earl of Carnarvon, he having inherited this part of his estate from his mother, rather than through his father’s marriage settlement. Lord Porchester was the courtesy title of the first son of the Earl of Carnarvon, hence the name.

The properties seem to have originally been purchased in blocks as investment properties to let, sometimes with an owner living in one. The freeholds were sold by the Earl in 1920 and gradually the houses came to be owner-occupied, often being sold to sitting tenants. Many tenants during the first 40 years or so seem to have been active or retired members of the professions or successful traders in the town. We have traced the names of occupiers from electoral rolls between 1918 and 1939, but, as these do not give precise addresses, we can only link names to houses when we have supporting information from the deeds documentation.

Walker, who built many of the Victorian / Edwardian houses in Bingham often built in small phases and on what we would now term ‘brownfield’ sites. The paperwork we have seen in this case suggests the leases for each pair of houses were phased too, if only a matter of a few months apart. The freeholds to those houses for which we have seen the deeds so far were sold in 1920, as is the case with many Bingham properties. We think the fifth Earl sold the freeholds to finance his archaeological excavations in Egypt with Howard Carter who found the tomb of Tutankhamun. As usual the Earl retained the mineral rights.

We have been fortunate so far to have seen deeds for numbers 75 and 77 - formerly numbers 3 and 4 Porchester Terrace and one abstract of title for number 73 (formerly number 2). These are described below. As has been the case with other houses, where a couple of properties have been in common ownership, the relevant papers seem to be split between the deeds bundles for each of them. Thus, what follows is a based on the deeds for both houses.

Numbers 75 and 77 were described on a plan attached to the original lease from Lord Carnarvon and described as plot 8. Four plots are shown, demonstrating that both the previous buildings were part of the Shelford Estate. It would be interesting to identify the other plots as there could only have been four for Porchester Terrace - possibly other parts of the estate were being leased at that time in Bingham. Numbers 1 - 17 Long Acre were built around 1884 with plots numbered 31 to 36. Maybe the Earl was leasing a large amount of land at around the same time, such that plot numbers had to be used for ease of reference.

The Earl imposed his usual conditions relating to painting outside every four years and inside every seven. The houses had to be insured for £200 and were not to be used for a long list of purposes including selling liquor or as a factory or for other noxious uses.

On 15 July 1920 the Earl of Carnarvon sold the freeholds of the two houses for £87-10-0 to Tom Gilman, now described as motor mechanic of 93 Front Street Arnold. The Earl sold many freeholds about this time, (we think to raise money for his investment in Howard Carter’s excavations of Tutankhamun). The two messuages are described as occupied by Elizabeth Lovett and Richard Henshaw. Lovetts were occupiers from (at least) 1918 to 1935 and Henshaws from 1918 to 1938. The Earl, as we have seen before, reserved the mineral rights.

On 24 August 1920 John Tom Gilman sold each house to the tenants for £405; number 77 to Richard Henshaw, gentleman and number 75 to Elizabeth Lovitt, wife of Thomas Lovitt of Long Acre, gentleman so at this point single ownership of the pair comes to an end. The description gentleman rather suggests middle class occupation and ownership of Porchester Terrace, which was a clearly superior row of houses!

As well as the tiled porch floor, Number 77 also boasts the original boot scraper to the side of the front door.

“With thanks again to our friends at the Bingham Heritage Trails Association for their kind permission to use the information above. As the local Estate Agent for Bingham, we have sold numerous properties over the years that have the historic link of being previously Sold by the Earl of Carnarvon to help fund the Egyptian search by Howard Carter for the final resting place of Tutankhamen” - Jonathan Hammond