A market town that grew after the war
Bingham is about eight miles east of Mapperley, an old market town with a charter from 1341 and an octagonal Butter Cross in its Market Place. Its buildings, though, are mostly not old. Wikipedia says the majority are relatively new, and the 1960s and 1970s saw almost constant development of new houses. Since around 2018, the Romans' Quarter north of the town has added plans for around 1,000 more homes.
Textured ceilings and patching
Textured ceiling finishes were popular in British homes through the 1960s and 1970s. If your Bingham house still has one, patching it raises two questions.
The first is safety. Textured coatings applied before 2000 can contain asbestos, so have it tested before anyone sands, scrapes or cuts into it. The second is the finish. Matching a swirl or stipple pattern on a small patch rarely looks right, so the usual choice is between repairing the damage and skimming the whole ceiling flat, or keeping the patch small and accepting it may show. Patch Me If You Can skims over textured ceilings, so a leak patch can be the moment you finally get rid of the old texture.
Other common repairs in post-war houses
Beyond the ceilings, houses of this age tend to need the same handful of fixes: chases after a rewire, the gap left where a gas fire came out, cracked plaster over door heads, and worn corners on the stairs. Post-war walls are usually plastered with gypsum on brick or block, so most of these are straightforward to fill and finish flat.
If you are planning to redecorate a whole room, get every repair done first, including small dents and old screw holes. A fresh coat of paint, especially a pale or silk finish, shows up flaws that the old colour used to hide.
Newer homes at the Romans' Quarter are plasterboard throughout. Dents and fixing holes there are repaired with board and a thin finishing coat, and settlement cracks are left until the house has finished drying out.
The old centre
Bingham's conservation area, the first in Rushcliffe, has early cottages and vernacular buildings, and 24 listed buildings clustered between the church and the Market Place and along Long Acre. If you live in one of these, older lime plaster and listed building rules both come into play, so talk to Rushcliffe Borough Council before anything original is replaced.
To book, call 07877 353120 or use the enquiry form. Patch Me If You Can is open every day, 7am to 5pm.
