Bentworth
Bentworth is a village and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England. The nearest town is Alton, which lies about east of the village. It sits within the East Hampshire Hangers, an area of rolling valleys and high downland. The parish covers an area of and at its highest point is the prominent King's Hill, above sea level. According to the 2011 census, Bentworth had a population of 553.
The village has a long history, as shown by its diverse range of heritage-listed buildings. Bronze Age and Roman remains have been found in the area and there is evidence of an Anglo-Saxon church in the village. The manor of Bentworth was not named in the Domesday Book of 1086, but it was part of the Odiham Hundred at the time. Land ownership of the village was passed by several English kings until the late Elizabethan era. During the Second World War, Bentworth Hall was requisitioned as an outstation for the Royal Navy and nearby Thedden Grange was used as a prisoner of war camp. Parts of the village were designated a conservation area in 1982.
The parish contains several manors including Bentworth Hall, Hall Place, Burkham House, Wivelrod Manor, Gaston Grange and Thedden Grange. The estate of Bentworth Hall was split up as a result of various sales from the 1950s. St Mary's Church, a Grade II* listed building which parts of which date back to the late 11th century, lies at the centre of the village. The village has two public houses, the Star Inn and the Sun Inn; a primary school; and its own cricket club. Bentworth formerly had a railway station, Bentworth and Lasham, on the Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway until the line's closure in 1936. The nearest railway station is now east of the village, at Alton.
History
Prehistory to Roman
The village name has been spelt in different ways, including: Bentewurda or Bintewurda and Bynteworth. The original meaning of the name Bent-worth may have been a place of cultivated land, or a way through land such as woodland. The Swedish scholar Eilert Ekwall argues that a derivation from the Old English bent-grass is unlikely, and suggests a derivation from The tũn of Bynna's people.In October 1935 a Neolithic basalt axe-head was found in the village, indicating occupation in prehistoric times. Pot sherds and faunal remains from the Iron Age and several coins have been discovered, including a Bronze coin from the reign of Valentinian I, discovered in 1956. The Romans built a road between the Roman town of Silchester to the north of Old Basing, and the Roman settlement of Vindomis, just east of the present-day town of Alton, which measured 15 Roman miles.
A Bronze Age cremation urn was found in 1955 just north of Nancole Copse, approximately from St Mary's Church. The urn is now displayed in the Curtis Museum in Alton. Belgic pottery and animal bones were found in 1954 at Holt End, a hamlet south of Bentworth. Pottery, bone objects, spindle-whorls and fragments of Roman roofing tiles were unearthed at Wivelrod Manor.
Medieval
Bentworth was not mentioned separately in the 1086 Domesday Survey, although the entry for the surrounding Hundred of Odiham mentions that it had a number of outlying parishes that included Bentworth. Soon after Domesday, Bentworth became an independent manor. Between 1111 and 1116 it was granted by Henry I to Geoffrey, Count of Anjou.The earliest mention of Bentworth village was in the charter of 1111–1116 from Henry I to the Archdiocese of Rouen of "the manor of Bynteworda and the berewica of Bercham ". St Mary's Church was not included in this charter but in 1165 King Henry II granted it to Roturn, then the Archdiocese of Rouen. When King John began losing his possessions in Normandy he took back the ownership of several manors, including Bentworth. He then ceded Bentworth manor to Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, in 1207–8. The manor was returned to Rouen, who held the property until 1316, when Edward II appointed Peter de Galicien as its custodian.
Some time after 1280 a new stone hall house was built at Bentworth, a typical medieval hall house and has been variously called Bentworth Hall and Bentworth Manor House. Since 1832 it has been known as Hall Place. In 1333 the property owner was granted the right for a private chapel on the premises. Maud de Aula was given permission to hold services at Bentworth Hall chapel from 1333 to 1345; the remains of this building can be seen today immediately to the southwest of Hall Place. In February 1336 to manor was granted to Peter, Archbishop of Rouen, but he appeared to subsequently have nothing to do with it, as four months later ownership of the manor passed to William Melton, the Archbishop of York. Upon his death in 1340 he left his possessions to his nephew William de Melton, the son of his brother Henry.
In 1348, William de Melton obtained King Edward III's permission to give his manor to William Edendon, Bishop of Winchester. The ownership of the manor of Bentworth was then passed by marriage to the Windsor family, who had been constables of Windsor Castle. The Bentworth Hall estate was evidently returned to the Melton family, because it is mentioned among their possessions in a document dated to 1362. It then passed to William's similar-named son, Sir William de Melton. Sir William's son, John de Melton, who inherited the house in 1399, was recorded as owner of the manor of Bentworth in 1431. He died in 1455, and was succeeded by his son until the latter's death in 1474, then finally his grandson John Melton. After the death of the last, the manor of Bentworth remained in the possession of the Windsor family for at least 150 years.
Elizabethan to Georgian
The Windsors owned many manors, including Bentworth. An example is from the will of Edward, 3rd Lord Windsor, dated 20 December 1572 which contains the words: "... touching the disposition of... all those my manors of Bentworth Hall, Burkham, Astleye, Mill Court and Thrustons... in the county of Southampton... "Twelve years later in 1590, the 5th Lord Windsor, Henry Windsor, sold the manor of Bentworth to the Hunt family, who had been tenants since the beginning of the 1500s.
Ownership passed in 1610 to Sir James Woolveridge of Odiham and in 1651 to Thomas Turgis, a wealthy London merchant. His son, also Thomas, described as one of the richest commoners in England, left the manor of Bentworth to his relative William Urry, of Sheat Manor in 1705.
In 1777 William Urry's daughters Mary and Elizabeth married two brothers, Basil and William Fitzherbert of Swynnerton Hall, Staffordshire. Their sister-in-law was Maria Fitzherbert, the secret wife of the Prince Regent, later King George IV. In about 1800, Mary Fitzherbert became owner of Bentworth Manor and Manor Farm.
19th century to the Second World War
In 1832 the Fitzherbert family sold the Bentworth Hall estate at an auction in London to Roger Staples Horman Fisher for approximately £6000. Almost immediately Fisher started building the present Bentworth Hall. In 1848 the estate was sold to Jeremiah Robert Ives. The Ives family later shared ownership with the author George Cecil Ives who lived for a time at the hall with his paternal grandmother. In 1898 a station for the Basingstoke and Alton Light Railway was proposed which would serve Bentworh, Lasham and the village of Shalden. Land was taken from the villages of Bentworth and Lasham to provide for the railway station. In 1870–72 the Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales by John Marius Wilson described Bentworth asIn 1897 Emma Ives died and ownership of the Bentworth Hall estate passed to her son Colonel Gordon Maynard Gordon-Ives, who had in 1870 had built Gaston Grange as his residence. After his mother died he continued to live there, leasing Bentworth Hall to William Nicholson, the Member of Parliament for Petersfield. Gordon-Ives died on 8 September 1907 and the estate passed to his son, Cecil Maynard Gordon-Ives, a Captain of the Scots Guards in the First World War, who occupied it until his death on 23 July 1923. The Bentworth Hall Estate was then purchased by Arthur d'Anyers Willis in 1924 and was sold again to Major John Arthur Pryor in 1932, who lived at Bentworth Hall until the estate was taken over by the military during the Second World War.
Second World War
Bentworth Hall was requisitioned for war use and was where a number of organisations were based. In 1941 it was used by the Mobile Naval Base Defence Organization and it was later an outstation of the Royal Navy's Haslar Hospital in Portsmouth, the bedrooms being used as wards. Later, it was occupied by officers from the airfield at Lasham; one commander kept an aircraft in a field towards New Copse and used it as transport to Lasham Airfield. From 1942 to 1944 Thedden Grange was used as a prisoner of war camp. During the war Nissen huts were built on what is now the Complins housing estate. The War Department had occupied the Holybourne property and constructed 26 Nissen huts and other structures on the grounds, some of which were converted into civilian housing after the war. In 1966 the property was sold and 41 homes were built on the former site of Complins estate and brewery.Post-war
In 1947 the Bentworth Hall estate was bought by Major Herbert Cecil Benyon Berens, who was a director of Hambros Bank in London from 1968. In 1950 Berens built two new lodge houses at the junction of the drive to Bentworth Hall towards the main road through the village. Their family arms included a bear, and when Berens acquired the Bentworth Hall estate, carvings of bears were put up in various places. Two of which can be seen at the entrance to the Bentworth Hall drive, between the two lodge houses. Herbert Berens died on 27 October 1981, and the remaining estate was put up for sale. Initially Bentworth Hall was offered as a single property, but its outbuildings were divided into a number of separate dwelling units and other parts were sold to local farms. In June 1982, the Bentworth Conservation Area was established, incorporating many of the local buildings of note, extending along the main lane and around the church.Bentworth was awarded a gold postbox in 2012 after Peter Charles, a resident of the village, won a gold medal in the equestrian event of the 2012 Summer Olympics. A postbox in Alton was incorrectly painted gold in Charles' honour, until the Royal Mail later painted the correct postbox in Bentworth.