North Collingham, United Kingdom

In medieval and early modern times Collingham operated an openfield system and enclosure did not take place until the turn of the 18th/19th centuries, changing much local farming from a small holding of strips and the right to extensive grazing, to individual small cottage holdings or a precarious existence as a landless agricultural labourer. The wide square fields and relatively few isolated farms are the result. One field was set aside in the enclosure award of 1790 for lease every year with the revenues being put to the use of the poor of the parish. Around the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century there was an influx of agricultural labour, displaced from the enclosures of the upland Lincolnshire villages in places like Boothby Graffoe, Coleby and Harmston, taking the place of former Collingham people who had moved to towns such as Lincoln, Newark and Nottingham in search of better employment.

During the siege of Newark in the English Civil War, the countryside was subject to deprivation from the opposing armies wanting food and fresh horses and the village suffered. In 1664, a mercer of Collingham, one Thomas Ridge, issued his own copper halfpenny tokens, in response to currency shortage after the civil war.

In the 19th century Collingham was fairly self-sufficient with its own watchmaker, shoemakers, blacksmiths, dressmakers, schools, grocers and carriers. There were many local societies and the Nonconformist churches had their own congregations. At one point there was considerable enmity between the vicar of North Collingham and the rector of South Collingham with many disputes about the schools in the village. There are a large number of listed buildings in the village [1], from the c16 through to the c19, and the village is highly valued as a place to live and commute from.