On Saturday 8th May 2021, keeping within Covid-19 guidelines and social distancing, a presentation was made to Tony Jarrow the outgoing Chairman of the Cropwell Bishop Allotment Committee.

The presentation was made on site during what can only be described as inclement weather!

Amanda Parkinson (Chair) along with Sue Shuttleworth (Membership Secretary), Sarah Gladman Bell (Treasurer) Jan Walker and John Hallam (Committee members), presented Tony with a "thank you" for his dedication and participation.

From starting the Cropwell Bishop Allotment Group, as well as being the chairman for the last 11 years, Tony has contributed to building the group to a successful village resource with – hopefully – many more years of growing and enjoyment from the facilities we have.

Cropwell Bishop Allotment Committee

Springfield Close consists of new houses and flats and 40 years ago none of it existed, Yet, like all our streets, its name commemorates the history of Cropwell Bishop.

However, unlike most other streets, it does not relate to a person but a place.

Where is the spring?

Long before the 1930s, when piped water came to the village, residents relied on springs to supply drinking water. There were several at one time although these days they are effectively dry, mainly the result of the disruption caused by gypsum mining after the 1940s.

For example, when the present Cropwell Bishop Allotment site was established in 2010, the possibility of sinking a well to get water was considered and the British Geological Survey at Keyworth approached for advice.

It's geologists were of the opinion that, whilst there was a possibility of locating a water source, exploratory bore holes would have to be drilled at least 10m deep. All this would cost several thousand pounds and, in reality, would probably prove futile.

Makes you realise that paying Severn Trent to supply our water is altogether more convenient, reliable and cheaper.

The bottom end of the village, around the church, was once served by a spring in the field behind where the Primary School now stands. It was up a hill, and that hill was, quite naturally, known as Spring Hill.

There is no longer any trace of where the spring was but its location is shown on a map from the 1930s.

In earlier times the spring was known as Eastwell Spring and then, in the 1800s, as Cock Butt Spring. At that time a hand-pump and brick-surround were added.

The Cock Butt name comes from a small field that was named Cock Butt Close. It has since been absorbed by the field named Spring Hill.

An overlay image at the end of this section, shows that it does not quite correspond to the position of the spring, but it is clearly the source of that old name.

In the following image, the 1930 map overlays a recent satellite image of the field, making it possible to visualise where the spring was.

Aerial photos do not show hills, but the ground-level photo below does so clearly. It must have been a bit of a climb to fetch your water.

People would collect water in buckets carried on a yoke over their shoulders. Thankfully, the journey with full buckets was downhill.

So, the hill was called Spring Hill and it is easy to imagine people referring to the field as Spring Field.

Once the plan for a new street had been approved, it must have been an easy decision for parish councillors to call the street Springfield Close – and that is just what they did.

Deciding what to build on the street

The decision to build the street was made in the 1980s, but finalising the plan was not straight forward.

For years, the parish council had expressed a need for warden-aided accommodation in Cropwell Bishop, primarily for aging residents but also for elderly relatives of younger people living here. But during those years, Rushcliffe Borough Council (RBC) could not be persuaded to go ahead with the project.

Then, out of the blue, a planning application to build large detached houses in the village was submitted to RBC – and it was on the very site that the parish council had in mind to build the warden-aided accommodation.

Following negotiations between the two councils and the developer, a compromise was reached.

Cropwell Bishop Councillors would not object to the street planning application as long as the developer included a block of warden-aided flats. Fortunately, everyone agreed and building began in the late 1980s.

Before building could begin, the developer had to clear away the buildings that were already occupying part of the site – which happened to be an ancient farmhouse and its out-buildings.

Old Hall Farm was over a hundred years old and has been mentioned in several of the village street stories of Cropwell Bishop.

Below are photos from the 1960s and 1970s when it was still a working farm.

Clearing the site

Why Rawlings?

Having named the street Springfield Close, the councillors now had to come up with another name – one for the block of 33 flats. As we all now know, they gave it the name Rawlings Court, but you may wonder where the name came from.

The parish councillors had named the street after a field, so maybe felt a need to offset this by naming the flats after a person.

They didn’t have to look far to find a most suitable one, a character that was still fresh in the memory of those sitting around the oak table of the parish council chambers (or rather, the put-up tables in a cold Memorial Hall).

No matter, the unanimous decision was to name the flats after a Tom Rawlings.

Unlike the naming of streets, they did not need to abide by the same rules. You can’t name a street after a person until they have been dead for at least 20 years, but, apparently, this doesn’t apply to a block of flats. Which is just as well because Tom had died only 5 years earlier.

This did at least mean that memories of his achievements were fresh in the minds of many living in the village.

Tom Rawlings was born in Cropwell Bishop in 1902 and died here in 1983. In between, he worked in the village for his wages and, as we shall see, worked for the villagers for free.

His father, Richard Rawlings, came from Downham Market in Norfolk and he married Cropwell Bishop girl, Elizabeth, in 1884. At the time he described himself as a brickmaker and they lived in a house at the Cotton Brickworks where he worked.

In 1901, the growing family were still living at the Brickworks but Richard then described himself as the manager of the Brickworks.

By 1911, the circumstances of the Rawlings family appear to have changed, and not for the better.

Richard and Elizabeth, together with their 7 children (another 3 had died in infancy), were now living in a 2-bedroom house on Mill Hill (top of Fern Road) and Richard was a “worker at the Gypsum Mill”.

Nothing more is known of the change in the family's fortune but, no matter, life goes on.

Tom Rawlings was the youngest child of the family. His full name was, Thomas Cooper Rawlings. All the children enjoyed at least two Christian names, examples being; Elizabeth Hannah May Rawlings and William Smith Rawlings.

We have a photo of these two at Cropwell Bishop School. By the time he was 15 years old, William was a ‘pupil-teacher’ at the School.

Tom Rawlings lived his life in Cropwell Bishop and worked at the Gypsum Works. He was deeply involved in a number of village activities: he was a keen bell-ringer, served as the Churchwarden and was a parish councillor.

He was also a founding member of the "Men's Institute" that was set up in the early years of the Memorial Hall. Maybe they envied the activities of the Women's Institute; we don't know.

Here is a photo of the group in 1932 and it includes Tom Rawlings.

Tom was the first caretaker of the Memorial Hall. It opened in 1929 and Tom was its caretaker for 50 years.

To commemorate this achievement, the parish council showed the gratitude of the village, by presenting him with a watch. (Note to younger readers: a good watch was an expensive and treasured item in those days)

Within a few years, ill health prevented him carrying on with his duties and in 1983 he died at the age of 81. He never married but had lots of relatives.

Tony Jarrow

Note: Thanks to Anne Terzza, Lol Simpson and David Glyn-Jones for their help with this article.

Springfield Close in 2020

Rawlings Court in 2021

I start my report by reflecting on the fact that in the second decade of the 21st century we face a pandemic that at first seemed like a fourteenth century plague, with nearly everything shut down and all of us called upon to help those who have been affected by it.

The pandemic has shown us the best in the people in our community. We saw a Coronavirus Volunteer Group quickly set up and established at the beginning of the first lockdown with over 40 volunteers supporting our isolating and vulnerable residents.

The volunteers did shopping, gardening, dog walking and befriending, often just being there for a chat to those lonely and vulnerable residents. This volunteer group undoubtedly helped lift people through the pandemic.

Secondly and further into the first lockdown we saw the start of the Community Food Bank. The food bank was run by the Parish Clerk Janice Towndrow and Carol Halpin, together with a group of volunteer delivery teams. The village once again rallied; monetary donations were made and lots of food was and is still being donated to this wonderful scheme.

In 2020 Cropwell Bishop Parish Council welcomed a new Co-opted council member, a local man Jacques Lacey who has a strong family relationship with the village dating back to his Great Grandfather an agricultural worker and his Grandfather a Gypsum Miner.

We also said a sad farewell to Howard Kendall, a former member of the Parish Council and the first organiser of the Nottingham City Festival who passed away in December 2020 at the age of 94 after a long illness.

Parish Council Meetings

Like all life during this pandemic, the Parish Council have not been able to meet in person as a group and have become accustomed to ‘ZOOM’ meetings which have seemed to work very well.

Town & Parish Conferences

Cllrs have ‘attended’ these conferences via the use of ‘ZOOM’ and have found them constructive. Recent conferences have concentrated mainly on new building throughout the Borough, however the most recent conference made us more conscious of the problem of single use plastics, so we decided as a Parish Council we should join the Borough in its campaign to reduce single use plastics in our community.

The Environment

The main issue facing the Parish Council is the number of new applications to build in the Green Belt. Unfortunately, our well thought out arguments put forward in these objections are being ignored by Borough’s Planning Officers.

A major concession we have managed to win from the Borough planners is that in future Hedgehog Highways must now be provided in all planning applications. At the January 2021 Parish Council meeting the Clerk confirmed a Hedgehog Highway will be included as part of the new development off Church Street.

We have recently seen the start of a new Cropwell Bishop Litter-picking Group. This group are focusing on litter-picking in the areas our Village Ranger/Lengthsman is not able to target. I have to say it is making a huge difference to how the entrances and surrounding areas to our village look. It is also stopping the plastics and waste affecting our wildlife. The group is doing a great job.

New Co-op and Car Parking Problems

Rushcliffe BC and the Parish Council opposed the building of the new Co-op on the Wheatsheaf car park, arguing that this would cause major traffic problems, which have now come to fruition, causing some anger and a lot of distress to residents living in the area. The Parish Council and several residents have been in constant contact with the Officers at Notts CC who are continuing to work on a suitable traffic calming scheme for Cropwell Bishop to address all the issues.

Policing

Police Constable Caroline Voce will once again try and organise the monthly beat surgeries once the current restrictions are lifted.

Community Events/Schemes/Socialising

The Entertainments Committee have not been able to meet or run events due to the pandemic which has also seen the closure of the Youth Club and the Scouts for the present time. As soon as they are able, they will resume these events with the correct safety procedures in place to move forward.

The Parish Council took the decision that once again we would not run Picnic in the Park due to the pandemic and the uncertainty of when restrictions would be fully lifted. The Parish Council would like to try to organise some form of celebration later in the year to help lift spirits.

Other groups such as the Community Road Safety Scheme, Saturday Café and Cropwell Lunch Club have also not been able to run during the pandemic, However, they are all looking to resume as soon as restrictions allow.

Following the reorganisation of the Gardening Club we now have the Cropwell Bishop Growers & Gardeners who were set to meet once a month at the Old School. This and the Annual Village Show has also been affected by the pandemic, but they are looking to resume in September.

Old School Jubilee Gardens

These gardens have been tended over the last year by a group of volunteers, some of whom are members of the Growers & Gardeners club. They have done an excellent job planting, weeding, and watering to keep the gardens looking spectacular for our residents to take pleasure in. I invite all our village residents to come and sit a while in The Old School gardens and enjoy the flowers and surroundings at any time.

Play Equipment

The Parish Council has been looking at what to put in place at the old Skate Park site at the playing fields and the idea is to put a Petanque (Bools pit) in this area.

Memorial Hall

All of you may now be aware that the Memorial Hall building is fenced off. A report from committee member Chris Keast, was made via the March 2021 Parish Council meeting and a copy of those minutes are available on the Parish Council website for you all to read.

In brief:
Mr. Keast had advised that several surveys had been done over the years which gave a limited life span of the building without substantial works being carried out. The Parish Council had paid for a survey done in 2013 by Principal Surveyors, which concluded in the medium-term, that they should either look for a new building or carry out extensive works. The report detailed medium terms as being 5 to 10 years which is where we are now.

In February, the Parish Council released funds held in trust for the Memorial Hall to engage PULSE CONSULTANTS to do a feasibility study and cost estimates for a refurbishment or demolition and rebuild.

Those Estimates are: Refurbishment £537k which would give the building a further life span of 15 years. Demolish and Rebuild: £1.4million which would give a new build a life span of 60 years.

No decision has been made at the time of writing this report.

Acknowledgments:

Parish Councillors

John Greenwood for his continued campaign for improved bus services. Notts County Councillor Neil Clarke & Borough Councillor Gordon Moore whose financial help continued advice and support make so many things achievable.

Gary Jowett

For ensuring the village had supplies through the pandemic which were hard to find in the supermarkets and his support in supplying goods for the Food Bank.

Russell Price

For his financial support of the food bank.

Jubilee Gardening Group

My thanks to Sue and Eddie Ward, Julie Pooley, Glyn Greewood, Pam Wregg, Irene Skerratt, Eileen Hepworth, Maggie Shirran and Natalie Pearson for the hard work and time put in to making the Jubilee Gardens looking spectacular.

Ray Kimpton

Our Village Ranger for continuing to keep the appearance and cleanliness of the village his priority throughout the pandemic, despite the increased duties that the Lengthmans Scheme has brought about.

Tony Jarrow

For the village Website, and with the help of Anne Terzza having brought the village history to all during the pandemic.

Darrel Towndrow

Who continues to keep our IT up to date, the Website Compliant and who continues to be a big help to me when I need his expertise.

Parish Clerk

My thanks to our Parish Clerk, Janice Towndrow, who has kept the Parish Council running efficiently during the pandemic. Together with Carol Halpin the Clerk has contributed so many hours to organise, collect and distribute goods to the Food Bank to our village people so severely affected by this pandemic.

Finally, and most importantly this year, my special thanks to the great people of Cropwell Bishop who have given freely of their time to make a success of the Coronavirus Support Group and the Food Bank during this awful time.

There are too many to thank individually but each person involved has my sincere thanks. It is truly heart-warming to see that when we find ourselves in real need, our community pulls together to help each other through.

Alan Wilson,
Chairman.

Lisa Newbold is the new Co-op Member Pioneer for Cropwell Bishop Co-op.

As part of Lisa’s role, she connects local groups and causes, and individuals, with one another to help and support each other in the local community.

Lisa also advises groups on how to apply for the Co-op’s Local Cause Funding amongst other things.

It would be really helpful if Lisa could create a list of local groups so she can get in contact with you to hopefully work together.

Lisa would be grateful if you would contact her via email at lisa.newbold@coop.co.uk with:
• The name of your group
• A brief description of what you do
• Your contact details – name, email address and phone number

Thank you in advance

Cropwell Bishop Co-op

What do you call a short street with a dead end?

In Cropwell Bishop it will most likely be called a Close, but it might be named a Lane, Drive, Avenue or Road. For me, the odd one out is Road because this is generally used to describe a street that is not dead-ended. A ‘through-road’, in other words.

It’s no big deal, so the residents on Marshall Road need not lose any sleep over the name of their street and it is not likely to attract more visitors or dog-walkers than the other streets in the village, one would hope.

Finding a reason for the Marshall in its name is more interesting.

Maps

As seasoned Street-Story readers will know, the parish councillors of the early 1970s, who had the task of allocating names to the many new streets being built, loved looking at the 1804 map of the parish. The map showed who owned the land at that time.

So, that has to be the place we must look for evidence of a Marshall.

It is encouraging to find a number of the fields have “Marshall” printed on them, but a little disheartening to realise that there are three different Marshall characters on the map – a William and two Johns.

The street is called, Marshall, not Marshalls, so we are going to have to pick the one that our councillors most likely had in mind. Let’s start by looking at the land on which Marshall Road is built: does that provide a clue?

Comparing today’s village with the one in 1804 is not always easy but the ever-present Grantham Canal, Nottingham Road and Field Lane makes it possible.

A close-up of this area does show two fields owned by a John Marshall, which is promising. However, one is owned by John Marshall Senior, and the other is owned by John Marshall Junior. We will need to look more closely.

By overlaying this map on a recent satellite image of the streets should help us.

Well, it helps but it is not clear cut. The land of John Marshall Senior, clearly overlaps almost the whole length of a street. An initial reaction is to say, “job done”, but look again at the map.

The road it overlaps is not Marshall Road, but Brownhill Close. In fact, you wonder why Brownhill Close was not given the Marshall name. Well, it wasn’t so we have to move on.

The bottom right-hand corner of the Marshall field does indeed overlap the middle portion of Marshall Road; so that is something to celebrate.

Can we, I wonder, stop our search now and forget about any other possible Marshall connections. We could, but we would never know if a different Marshall had a better claim to the street name: the only way we can resolve this is to probe the history of all the Marshalls of Cropwell Bishop during the 1700s and 1800s.

The Marshall Family

As soon as people start talking about, “2nd cousin, twice removed”, or whatever, my eyes glaze over and my brain stops working. I have to have picture in front of me, which, in this investigation, means a family tree.

Even after constructing the tree, it becomes necessary to look carefully at the dates and links to see how it might relate to the street name. Before we do, it is worth pausing to wonder how much detail our councillors really did go into when selecting this street name.

Modern technology makes searching and analysis far easier than it was in their day. They probably had to be more free-thinking and less analytical than we might be in 2021.

Ultimately, there is no right or wrong about street naming, only maybe, a preference for some sort of pleasing consistency. Our street-namers of old appear to have done their best, so let’s go back to our search.

In the family tree, let’s first focus on the middle part which includes Mary Mabbott (1760-1798). We can then relate to her, all the relevant characters as the story unfolds.

Mary Mabbott was from an established land-owning family in Cropwell Bishop. She married William Marshall when she was 22 and over the next 10 years, they had 4 children.

Life for them must have felt good. Then William died at the age of 38. He made his will just 6 days before his death.

Most of his wealth was promised to his three children (a fourth child died in infancy). He left his daughter, Dinah, £1000 (£150k in today’s money) and £500 to each of his sons. Nearly all the rest of his wealth was to be divided equally between the three of them. In every case, they would not actually inherit anything until they reached 21 years of age.

It might seem strange that little was left to his wife but Mary was already a rich woman in her own right. She had inherited a great deal, not from her parents, but from her Uncle William German. Look at the family tree.

Uncle William German was a well-to-do farmer who had married her mother’s sister, Ann Breedon. He was described as “a substantial farmer in Cropwell Bishop and lord of the Manor-Netherall”.

He is thought to have benefitted financially from the shortage of grain and other foodstuffs brought about by the French Wars in the late 1700s. He died in 1791 at the age of 70.

However, Uncle William and Ann had no children – so who could he leave all his land, cottages, properties and money too?

In the will he wrote a year before his death, his nephews, nieces and servants all inherited money. The amounts ranged from £10 to £400 and totalled over £1,500 (£225k in today’s money).

Nevertheless, in addition to his money, much of his wealth consisted of land, cottages, investments and properties – including his home, Old Hall Farm. All of this, he left to be shared equally between his wife and his niece, Mary Marshall (who was Mary Mabbott before her marriage to William Marshall). Thus, Mary became a wealthy woman.

Mary Mabbott had been living with her Uncle William and Aunt Ann before her marriage to William Marshall. They may well have treated her as the child they never had. Mary was clearly his favourite niece and the reason he left her half of everything in his will.

William German's wife, Ann, lived another 12 years after his death and, for a time, carried on with the farming business. She died in 1803.

So, thanks to Uncle William German, Mary Mabbott was very wealthy even before she married William. But money isn't everything, and now William was gone.

Mary was only 35, still young, but with three children under the age of 8, in need of support. Within a year, she had a new husband, Joshua Mann.

Joshua was originally from Hickling, and probably younger than Mary. He would have appreciated her need for a partner, because he too had recently lost his wife. He had married Lucy Kendall in 1792 but by 1794 she was dead. They had no children.

Two years after Mary married Joshua Mann in 1796, they had a son who they named Joshua. He was therefore the half-brother of Mary’s three Marshall children.

In the previous four years they had both lost their partners and now they must have thought they were set for a bright future together. But there was more tragedy to come.

Within 6 months of giving birth to Joshua, Mary died. She was 38, the same age that her first husband, William, had been when he died.

In her will, she left all that she had inherited from her Uncle William German to her three sons.

Her daughter, Dinah, appears to have been neglected but we must remember that Dinah had inherited over £150k (equivalent) from her father. Ten years later, Dinah would be married to a farmer and soon have children herself. The couple lived in various Leicestershire villages until eventually settling down at a 200acre farm in Shelford.

Getting back to the naming of Marshall Road, we have to consider which of the Johns and Williams on the family tree were around in 1804, the year of the Enclosure Map.

Let’s first consider the Williams. Mary’s husband, William Marshall, died 9 years before 1804 so is out of the reckoning. Then there is a William Marshall on the family tree who was born in 1828 – long after 1804.

The only viable William Marshall is Mary’s 15-year-old son, born in 1789. You may think him too young, but documents that accompanied the 1804 map listed the tenant of field 71 as, “the trustees of William Marshall, a minor”.

This is convincing evidence for saying that 15-year-old William Marshall was one of the three Marshall characters on the map and has to be a candidate for the naming of Marshall Road. What of the Johns?

There are three John Marshall’s on the tree, and Mary’s second son, John, has to be is a prime candidate for the street name. He was only 12 in 1804 but, as we have seen, this is no bar to being a land owner.

So, we can safely assume that he was the "Junior" John Marshall on the 1804 map. So who was John Marshall Senior?

Usually, when you see ‘senior’ and ‘junior’ applied to a name, you automatically think of father and son, but that is not the case here.

It was only by re-reading William Marshall’s will that the mystery was solved.

In the will, he leaves £10 to his brother for being one of the ‘Trustees and Executors’ of his will, and his brother’s name was John Marshall. He had to be the ‘John Marshall Senior’ on the 1804 map.

On the family tree, I have highlighted, in red, the three Marshalls on the 1804 map.

So, now we have to guess which one of these three the parish councillors in mind, if any, when they named Marshall Road. Let’s look at them in more detail.

John Marshall Senior was a farmer living at Stanford-on-Soar, near Loughborough, and his only contact with Cropwell Bishop was through his brother – and the land he inherited. An unlikely person to have a street named after him, I think.

William Marshall (born: 1789) was the eldest son of William Marshall (born: 1757) so looks a promising candidate – at least, at first glance. The trouble is, he didn’t stay here for long.

In 1818, when he was 29, he was married and farming in the village: he had 3 servants. But then he went to live in Shelford and, not long after, moved across the Trent to Stoke Bardolph where he died in 1839 at the age of 49. He doesn’t appear to have had much affinity for Cropwell Bishop.

Finally, there is John Marshall Junior, younger brother of William. He married Cotgrave girl, Mary, when he was 32 and they promptly moved to Stoke Bardolph where he was a farmer (I wonder if that is why his brother, William, moved to Stoke Bardolph).

It was around 1839 (which just happens to be when William died), that the family moved to Mary’s birthplace, Cotgrave. They lived there until his death in 1864.

So, another Marshall who appears to have been only too eager to leave Cropwell Bishop.

It is reassuring to discover that one of John's sons did return to Cropwell in later years. Henry Marshall (born in 1836) moved to Cropwell Bishop with his wife Elizabeth: their son, John, was born here.

When this son, John, was 26, he married Miriam from Kimberley and they went to live at the ‘The Laurels’ in Cropwell Butler where they had a small-holding.

All four in this branch of the family are buried in St Giles churchyard.

If our parish councillors were to meet today and wanted to name a street Marshall Road, I don’t think they would let the 1804 map restrict their search for a memorable Marshall character.

Nevertheless, in the 1970s access to historical evidence was difficult and time consuming. I suspect that once they saw the name of Marshall on many fields of the 1804 map, they simply decided that the family name was worth using for a street name. They may not even have got as far as having a particular member in mind.

Clever really, because we can all choose whichever Marshall we like when thinking of Marshall Road

If I were asked by a visitor today who the street was named after and had to pick just one, I think I would say Mary Marshall (1760-1798). After all, it was her inheritances and marriages that seem to have had the biggest influence on the history of Cropwell Bishop.

I wonder who the current residents of Marshall Road would pick.

Tony Jarrow

Note: Thanks to Anne Terzza for her help with this article.

Marshall Road in 2020

Step by step, the new housing development in the village is progressing.

Colin Bryan was walking the adjoining footpath this morning and took this photo of the perimeter fencing that is being erected.

Tony Jarrow

Residents can now make bookings for large unwanted items direct through our partners, Streetwise, on their new website (the existing channel on our website continues for this service too).

Collections are normally made on Saturdays and residents can choose a suitable date when enquiring.

To visit the Streetwise website, click: Streetwise

Rushcliffe Borough Council

At the Parsnip and Pears business in Cropwell Bishop, we are currently hiring for a couple of positions here in the village.

We are looking for people to join us as soon as possible.

JOB 1

Van Delivery Driver.
We are looking for a part-time van delivery driver for Fridays and Saturdays.
Must be over 25 years old for insurance purposes with a valid UK driving license.

JOB 2

Member of our packing team.
We are looking for someone to join our packing team on Thursdays.
Must be physically fit as the role includes some heavy lifting and being on your feet all day.

APPLY

Call: 0115 822 8622
or email: lorna@parsnipsandpears.co.uk

Parsnips and Pears
(The Cropwell Veg Box)