 Bothamsall
Our Lady and St Peter
History
The village’s early name ‘Borneshil’ has led to some disagreement
among experts but one interpretation, which answers well to the actual geography
is “shelf over a broad, river valley.” Alternatively, it may be
a reference to a spring in the village centre.
Bothamsall in Saxon times was of some importance in the area owing to its
geographical position and to the existence of a king’s manor – one
of three in Bassetlaw. Near Bothamsall the Rivers Meden and Maun join to form
the River Idle. Here in Saxon times was the “Coningswath” or King’s
ford. Similarly a mile to the north of the church is Crookford another crossing
place.
Research done in the early 1990s (through the study of maps, backed up by
archaeological finds, aerial photography and walks on the route where possible)
has suggested that one Saxon trackway from North Derbyshire to the Trent crossed
at Crookford then passed almost directly past the place where the church now
stands. Another, also bound for the Trent, came within a mile or two, crossing
the rivers this time at the Coningswath and going close to the site of the
later St James’ Chapel, Haughton where
it is possible there could have already been a little chapel.
According to Domesday Book the king’s manor was held by Earl Tosti prior
to the Conquest. Roger de Busli was overlord in the area and held the Bothamsall
manor for William in the early days after the conquest. Castle Hill, just outside
the village, with its remains of fortifications is evidence of a less than
benevolent Norman presence in the area.
There is no mention of a church at Bothamsall in Domesday Book. Possibly the
king’s estate did possess one similar to nearby Haughton Chapel. That
chapel is said to have Saxo-Norman architectural features which suggests at
least an early post-Conquest date. It is possible that Bothamsall’s chapel
was not dissimilar.
Bothamsall from early times was a part of the parish of Elkesley but with
a separate chapel. Certainly a church was already established when Richard
de Furnival, probably around 1220, relinquished all rights to the chapel in
Bothamsall to the Premonstratensian order of Welbeck Abbey, acknowledging it
to belong to the mother church in Elkesley. Elkesley parish was in the Abbey’s
possession until 1299 when it passed to the Archbishop of York, later to be
given back to the Premonstratensians in 1348. Welbeck Abbey itself was begun
in 1183 on the edges of Sherwood Forest and quickly established itself, being
given generous grants of lands, mills, etc.
Welbeck’s own canons provided the clergy for the chapel. One (unnamed)
was presented in 1226 but the first named canon is Lawrence de Ranby who was
there c1247.
The vicarage in 1291 was assessed at “altarage and demesne tithes” and
it is thought it was probably a manorial free chapel.
An early reference to Bothamsall in a document of 1297 refers to “the
court at Bothemsill” and to “Richard de Furneus and Richard de
Baselyngthorp” holding for Edward I “1 knight’s fee”.
Until the Reformation, the independence of Bothamsall chapel and the custom
of supplying clergy from the canons of Welbeck Abbey continued. These canons
were always referred to in contemporary records as “capellani” or “vicarii”.
At its height the monks of Welbeck had income from various sources amounting
to (in 1293) £140. Much later in 1512 it was established as having supreme
power over all White Canons in England and Wales. At the closing of monasteries,
however, the value of the income declared to the Valor Ecclesiasticus in
1534 was approximately £28, witnessing to its economic decline. Bothamsall
and Elkesley “parsonages” were jointly valued at £12 17s
2d in that same declaration.
Records of Christenings, however, despite the upheavals were begun in 1530
and weddings and burials in 1538.
Very little is recorded concerning Bothamsall church, except for the list
of incumbents, in the period after the Reformation. Welbeck Abbey lands (with
the advowsons) passed through several hands having been granted to John Holles,
Earl of Clare, by Elizabeth I in 1578. By marriages the patronage devolved
to the Dukes of Newcastle-upon-Tyne and then to the Dukes of Newcastle-under-Lyne
in 1756.
Little of concern was reported from Bothamsall in 1638 in response to questions
asked throughout the York diocese in pursuit of Archbishop Laud’s determination
to make all churches “worthy of the purpose.” Except for the need
of a door and cover for the pulpit nothing was in bad order. This was in marked
contrast to some nearby churches where catalogues of faults were reported,
followed by a stubborn reluctance on the part of their clergy and churchwardens
to put them right!
The 1641 Protestation Returns record that the returns of the villages of Elkesley and Bothamsall were completed on 6th March 1641. Unfortunately, this joining
of the villages makes it impossible for us to estimate the size of the Bothamsall
population. Four churchwardens are recorded but there is no indication of which
church they serve. Only one ‘gentleman’ is named. However, the ‘Henry
Bacon’ listed as the recorded incumbent of Bothamsall in 1628 and said
to be still there in 1643, may also have been officiating at Elkesley as no
other ‘minister’ is listed. Curiously a second ‘Henry Bacon’ is
listed directly below as ‘clerk’ presumably meaning a clergyman.
It seems possible that this is an administration error which led to the same
man being recorded twice.
Robert Thoroton in 1677 records the church as “St Mary’s”.
White’s Directory of 1844 refers to it as “St Mary
and St Peter”. J C Cox in 1912 referred to it as “St Peter’s”.
This was also the dedication recorded in Bishop Hoskyns’ Visitation of
1912. It became the Church of “Our Lady and St Peter”, probably
around 1924.
John Melson, curate in 1676, recorded 104 communicable persons with no recusants
and no dissenters in the parish for Archbishop Herring’s visitation of
1743. The curate, William Boawre, stated that there were ‘28 families
in my parish, not any of ’em Dissenters that I know of’. No other
licensed or other meeting house existed and he estimates ‘communicable
persons’ as 64 with only 14 regularly taking the sacrament – 12
at Easter. None of them gave the required notice apparently but the curate
affirmed he denied no-one who came to take the sacrament. Rather sadly, he
answers one question with ‘I am only the curate here to ye Duke of Newcastle,
he allows only £20 p. An-.’
A visitation return in 1764 showed an increase to 40 families and the number
of parishioners was about 100 (back to 1676 levels) but the number of communicants
has dropped to between 8 and 10 with none taking the sacrament at Easter,
a vivid testimony to a decline in village church attendances in the eighteenth
century.
By 1832 the earlier church was described as “an ancient edifice” but
with no mention of its condition. Cox, writing in 1912, recorded that the old
church had been ‘long dilapidated’ but the source for this comment
is not given. By this time a new church had been built which he praised.
Henry Pelham Fiennes Pelham-Clinton, 4th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, financed
the building of the new church. He wrote in his diary on 1st June 1822, of
his deceased first born child, “I propose to remove her remains to Bothamsall
when I shall have completed the church and family vault there.” By the
year end his wife and a new born child were also dead. All were placed in the
vault at Bothamsall church pending the rebuilding. The architect, Sir Robert
Smirke, was engaged in 1823, to design and supervise the project but on 25th
February 1824 the whole scheme changed and work began on a church and mausoleum
at Milton some miles away.
This was sufficiently completed by 1836 for the remains of the duchess and
her children to be transferred from Bothamsall church which was not to be rebuilt
until 1845.
The Present Church
In 1839 Worksop Manor was purchased by the Duke, and, partly on the advice
of his visitor, Sir Robert Peel, the demolition took place. There was therefore
an ample supply of stone available when work began at Bothamsall but some of
this stone also went into the building of the new vicarage (now known as Bothamsall
Hall) as well as into the church. In his diary for 8th June 1844 the Duke wrote
of “an excellent bed of stone” in Bothamsall which he also intended
to use in the rebuild. The incumbent, the Rev Henry Fiennes-Clinton, concluded
his return for the 1851 religious census with the comment that the church was
built “exactly on the same site and with a great portion of the old materials”.
This latter comment tends to be confirmed nowadays by a close examination of
some well-worn fabric.
The architect chosen was Andrew Trimen, Adelphi, London (not Wilkins as Pevsner
states). This is borne out by several letters from ‘miscellaneous correspondence’ to
the Duke of Newcastle regarding payments, materials, etc. At one point
Trimen suggests that the Duke’s coat of arms be carved in stone and inserted
in a ‘sunk island’ above the tower door of Bothamsall church. This
was not carried out.
The Duke records his pleasure at seeing the church completed in diary entries
during 1844-5: “The church at Bothamsall is as near perfect as can be … quite
a model for a village church … it is really beautiful” he wrote
on 21st November 1844; “I ne’er saw a church of its size that pleases
me better” on 25th November 1844; and then on 3rd January 1845 he recorded
that he was “more than ever pleased with it …”.
The church was finally reopened for worship on 20th April 1845 when pews had
been allocated satisfactorily.
Soon after this the work became less pleasing to the Duke. “Found the
builder’s work at the church miserably ill done, so rough and ill laid
as to be most unsightly if examined into”, he wrote on 13th June 1845,
and with the passage of time he was increasingly irritated: “No work
could be worse executed than it is – the shameful scamping of the
work now begins to show itself but too evidently, and in another season it
will be infinitely worse.” (4th October 1845). Finally, he turned on
the architect: “all Mr Trimen’s works are equally disgracefully
erected” (24th November 1845).
All written references agree that the church was rebuilt on the same site
as the earlier building. It consists of chancel, nave, north aisle, tower and
vestry and has been described as ‘a neat Gothic structure’ corresponding
to the old as nearly as possible. A door in the north wall of the chancel leads
to the vestry. There are two clear reasons to wonder whether a vestry may not
have existed in the former building or at least that it had not existed prior
to 1821. Firstly, the raised tomb of Henry Walters (d1689)
is now rather incongruously placed in that vestry. Secondly, the grave-marker
of Sir Charles
Craufurd (d1821), a distinguished soldier and husband to the Dowager
Duchess of Newcastle, is placed virtually in the doorway to the vestry and
hardly reflects there his importance in local society. The presence of two
much older grave-markers bearing crosses in the centre of the chancel suggests
there was very little re-arrangement of the flooring at the rebuild and therefore
we must presume Sir Charles’ stone was left in its original position.
Possibly the old church’s north-west corner contained a chapel or the
north aisle continued the length of the church with some partitioning between
it and the chancel. Walters’ tomb would then be placed on the northern
side of the partition which is more likely.
During the rebuild, a vicarage was built some 200 meters to the east of the
church.
The first incumbent was the Rev Henry Fiennes-Clinton, a relative of the
Duke of Newcastle. In 1851 he noted that the population was 319, that the parishioners
had contributed £100 to the building of the new church. Seating was provided
for 350 individuals and 100 of the seats were free. This was an increase of
50 seats over the old church. On 30th March 1851 the day of the census, Fiennes-Clinton
recorded 150 attending with an additional 50 Sunday scholars. Bothamsall was
comfortably above the 40% norm for estate villages: in 1851 38% of land in
Nottinghamshire was on estates where there was only one owner (apart from glebe
land). This percentage was the third highest in the country. In villages on
estates the attendance was calculated to be 40%. The Duke of Newcastle owned
four villages on his Clumber estate and the returns show he was successful
in keeping non-conformist places of worship out of three of them.
In 1879 the 7th Duke succeeded to the title at the age of 15. Studying later
at Magdalen College, Oxford he came under the influence of the the Anglo-Catholic
movement and it remained the dominant influence on his life. When in London
he worshipped at All Saints’, Margaret Street. To him we are indebted
for Bodley’s magnificent chapel in Clumber, begun in 1886, and the financing
of Comper’s work at Our Lady of Egmanton in 1897.
On the eve of the war, in 1912, visitation returns show the benefice income
for Bothamsall stood at £50 but the vicar now also had the income from
Elkesley. Perhaps surprisingly, the seating capacity for Bothamsall is now
given as 200 some 150 seats less than in 1851 just after the church was rebuilt.
Sunday school attendance at 47 showed very little reduction from the figure
recorded at the 1851 religious census (50 Sunday scholars).
A handwritten note found among vestry papers, and probably intended for magazine
or newspaper report recorded a sale of work at Easter 1917 opened by the Duchess
in the schoolroom – a room “gay with flags.” The work
was mainly done by the schoolchilden and Miss Atkins, their teacher. The sale
was in aid of the Red Cross, Belgian children and to raise funds to send parcels
to local men serving in the War. It records that the Duchess had an interest
in the Red Cross and had just returned from helping in that capacity in London.
She had gone round tables and “made liberal purchases”. Children
sang nursery rhymes directed by Miss Atkins and accompanied by Miss Helen
Peck, the churchwarden’s daughter.
In the early 20th century the Duke presented the patronage of some local churches
to the Society for the Maintenance of the Faith, of which he was president
from 1911 to his death in 1928. In 1924 Bothamsall church was consequently
transferred to their patronage. At the time of this change the church became
dedicated to Our Lady and St Peter. Subsequently clergy in the Anglo-Catholic
tradition were appointed to the living.
In 1945 the Rev D D Woodgate, an Anglo-Catholic, came to Bothamsall.
A villager reported that the faint turquoise colouring on the upper part of
the arcade columns is the remains of the painting of the church that the Rev
Woodgate financed himself, making the church very colourful. At this period
it had a Lady Chapel at the east end of the north aisle with a statue of Our
Lady on the altar.
After a long period of 140 years with little maintenance carried out, a faculty
was obtained in 1982 to carry out extensive work inside and outside the church
which involved, internally, the restoration of the north aisle. The floor was
flagged, walls replastered and painted, the heating system updated and the
building was rewired. Monuments were secured and the font removed
from the rear of the nave to a position in the north aisle. The area beneath
the tower was redecorated. The faculty also allowed for the ‘removal
of a recent rood beam’ which had presumably been erected since 1924.
The crucifix was to be suspended from the chancel arch. This work culminated
in an Order of Service for the Rehallowing of the restored interior of the
church conducted by the Rt Revd Denis Wakeling, Bishop of Southwell on
29th June 1983.
There followed in the 1990s work to repair the bells and
to install a new organ at the eastern end of the north
aisle at which time the Lady chapel was completely removed.
Over a longer period external work was carried out to the structure of the
tower. Other stonework was repaired or, where specified by the Diocesan Architect,
replaced. Drains and gutters were repaired. The entrance gates were repaired
and handrails and lighting provided at the steps.
In 2002 further redecoration was completed and electrical work carried out.
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