Gotham puts out urgent call for a 'caped crusader'... to turn its Royal British Legion clubhouse into a shop

Calling the caped crusader, Batman: Gotham needs you.

No, not the dark-metropolis-based-on-New York Gotham, the other one. The village in Nottinghamshire, with a 13th-century church and a thriving bowls club.

Gotham (population 1,800) has put out an urgent call for help buying its defunct Royal British Legion clubhouse for the village, so it can be turned into a shop, community café and “visitor hub”.

The people of Gotham have already amassed more than £100,000 in pledges from among themselves. Now, however, they are seeking financial help from outside the village, to bring them up to slightly above the current asking price of £210,000.

“We’re looking for funds, donations, and if possible a caped crusader,” said John Anderson, (not the mayor., but a 62-year-old retired science teacher and chairman of Gotham and District Community Venture Committee.)

“It would be fantastic to hear from any American friends of Gotham,” he said. “We all need a superhero around occasionally, don’t we?”

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“We’d love to link up with Ben Affleck,” added Mr Anderson’s fellow committee member Louise Third. “He’s already confirmed as playing Batman in the next film. We’d love him to become our patron.”

Aged 55, Ms Third assured The Independent (and Mr Affleck) that she was “too old” to be thinking of anything other than the good of the village. “We don’t want the Legion Club building to be snapped up by private developers. We want it to remain in the community.”

Gotham, Notts, she added, has long been associated with Gotham, New York. (Even if the British version is pronounced “Goat-ham” the old English for “goat home”.) The link has its origins in the Middle Ages when, according to legend, the inhabitants of Gotham, Notts, sought to deter King John from travelling through the village because at that time any road used by the monarch became a public highway.

Not wanting a public highway through their village, the medieval nimbys hit upon the cunning plan of feigning madness whenever the king’s messengers approached.

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This was enough to deter King John, and to ensure that the antics of Gotham’s inhabitants were celebrated in books including The Merie Tales of the Mad Men of Gotam.

These tales then inspired the American essayist Washington Irving repeatedly to refer to Manhattan as Gotham when satirising the behaviour of New Yorkers in 1807. The nickname stuck, possibly because New Yorkers quite liked to be associated with the outwitting of a medieval king.

And so in 1940, while leafing through a New York phone directory, Batman co-creator Bill Finger, who had already placed his character in New York, found his eye drawn to an entry for “Gotham Jewellers”. Gotham City was born. The rest is comic book history.

And the idea of a caped crusader visiting Gotham, Notts, is not all that fanciful. “We get a lot of people coming to the village to be photographed by the Gotham sign,” said Ms Third, “And occasionally they are in costume.”