Brief History of Beckingham-cum-Saundby

For the History of Beckingham and Saundby please visit https://www.beckingham-northnotts.org.uk/contents.htm

Beckingham North Notts (population c. 2,000) lies within the Parish Council of Beckingham cum Saundby and is situated in the county of North Nottinghamshire and borders onto Lincolnshire to the East and South Yorkshire to the North.

Further Reading

Local resident Adrian Gray has recently written a book on local history "People and Places of Bassetlaw, North Nottinghamshire"

https://bookwormretford.co.uk/product/people-places-of-bassetlaw-north-nottinghamshire/

Inclosure Award

The public general Inclosure acts normally specified where awards were to be deposited or enrolled, either by one of the courts of record or with the local clerk of the peace. The General Enclosure Acts appointed permanent enclosure commissioners who were authorised to issue Enclosure Awards without submitting them to Parliament for approval.

Inclosure awards are legal documents recording the ownership and distribution of land. They may detail land owned by churches, schools and charities, as well as roads, rights of way, drainage, land boundaries, different types of land tenure.

Prior to the Inclosures, and was categorized as "common" or "waste" or not in use "Common" land was under the control of the lord of the manor, but a number of rights on the land (such as pasture) were variously held by certain nearby properties, or (occasionally) held in gross by all manorial tenants. "Waste" was land without value as a farm strip – often very narrow areas (typically less than a yard wide) in awkward locations (like cliff edges, or inconveniently shaped manorial borders), but also bare rock, and so forth; "waste" was not officially used by anyone, and thus was often cultivated by landless peasants.

The remainder of the land was organised into a large number of narrow strips, with each tenant possessing a number of disparate strips throughout the manor, as would the manorial lord.

The Beckingham Inclosure Award is an amazing snapshot of history, featuring beautifully drawn map. It shows how the land of the parish was divided to the various owners in the 1770's. There are two original copies of the document per parish, one is deposited at the Nottinghamshire County Archives, the other is lost/unknown whereabouts and there is a 1935 reproduction copy, which is held by the Local History Group at the Willow Works it contains all the awards for the parcels of land and information and it contains a copy of the original map.

The Vestry

Vestries: Prior to 1894 the Vestry generally held property on behalf of other persons for a parish but had no legal personality. Parish property and land + local charity land before the passing of the 1894 act was held by the vestry as trustees. The most important of these trustees were the Churchwardens, the Overseers and the Guardians. There were also other public employees such as the Surveyor of Highways, Roads and Drains and the Pinder.

The passing of the 1894 Act resulted in the creation of parish councils, consisting of a Chairman, Councillors and Overseers (who were now part of the Parish Council as Overseers of the Precept), this Act transferred all the properties of the parish from the Vestry to the Parish Council. For example, in Beckingham this meant the legal ownership by the Council of the land which had been administered in the parish by the Surveyor of Highways, Roads & Drains.

Prior to the creation of Parish Council's in 1894 the Vestry held the power to appoint trustees (the Churchwardens and Overseers) to a non-ecclesiastical charity. This power transferred to Parish Councils in 1894 under the Passing of the Local Government Act 1894.

Pilgrim Fathers (& North Notts)

Many of the 50 Mayflower crew who set sail in 1620 across to Virginia in the USA came from this area and took over 100 passengers with them. The Mayflower was overcrowded after taking on passengers from the ship Speedwell after it foundered after leaving Southampton. William Brewster, Pilgrim Father was born in Scrooby in 1566 and is widley acknowledged as pre-eminently the leader of the "Pilgrims" In honour of the 400th anniversary of that voyage Beckingham PC planted 2 oaks, a bench with commemorative plaque at the Old Willow Works on Old Trent Road.

Here is a passenger list of that trip.