Benham Park

Architecture and history

The manor of Benham Valence was granted by Elizabeth I to Giovanni Battista Castiglione, her Italian tutor, in 1570. He is buried at St Mary's Church in Speen.

The current house was built between 1772–1775, and designed by Henry Holland and Capability Brown, for William Craven, 6th Baron Craven. It was later the home of his widow, Elizabeth, and her second husband, Alexander, Margrave of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The building was three storeys tall, nine bays wide, in a plain neoclassical style, of stone, with a tetrastyle Ionic portico.

The house was greatly altered in 1914; the portico at the rear of the house (facing the Great Lake) had its pediment removed and replaced by a stone balustrade. The roof was lowered in pitch and hidden behind a balustrade decorated at regular intervals. The servants' quarters (on the top left hand side of the house behind the loggia) were also demolished due to poor structural condition. However, the Circular Hall in the centre of the building, with its large niches and fine plasterwork, is probably as designed by Holland; it has an opening in the ceiling rising to the galleried floor above and a glazed dome. The principal staircase is also original.

The house is Grade II* listed, and one of its pairs of 17th-century ornate stone gate piers, removed from Hamstead Marshall, is Grade I listed. The park itself is Grade II listed and has a lake with a mill beside the house and aqueducts or artificial drains leading across marshy wetland to the River Kennet to the far south.

In the late 19th and early 20th century, Benham Place was the family seat of the Sutton baronets. Sir Richard Lexington Sutton sold Benham Park and 140 acres in 1982.

The building was converted into offices in 1983 by the IT company Norsk Data, who used it as their headquarters for European operations (outside Norway), until the company's dissolution in 2003, with large parts being acquired by 2e2. Then it was home to 2e2, an ICT lifecycle services provider, until 2012 when it dissolved. Also within the grounds were two office buildings built in the 1980s and these housed other companies such as mobile data solution provider CognitoIQ, Exony and Idox, all of which have now moved to other premises as the phases comprising the office block were demolished.

References

References

1. page 161, Buildings of England: Berkshire, Geoffrey Tyack, Simon Bradley, Nikolaus Pevsner, 2010 2nd Edition, Yale University Press, {{ISBN. 978-0-300-12662-4
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3. "Gate piers and gates at Benham Park, West Lodge, Speen".
4. {{NHLE
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6. William Page and P.H. Ditchfield (eds). [http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62688 'Parishes: Speen'], ''A History of the County of Berkshire: Volume 4'' (1924), pp. 97–110. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=62688. Date accessed: 13 February 2008. "Benham Place, recently called Benham Valence, is the seat of Sir Richard Sutton, bart." However, by 1924, he had died, and the house was the seat of his uncle Sir Arthur Sutton.
7. Richard Jinman. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/mar/23/eu.ruralaffairs "A cup of tea but tight lips in historic landowner's fiefdom"] ''The Guardian'', Wednesday 23 March 2005
8. "Berkshire History: Benham Park".
9. [https://www.telecompaper.com/news/2e2-plans-around-gbp70-mil-aim-flotation--442104] 2e2 plans around GBP70 mil Aim flotation
10. "2e2 - Creating Business Advantage".
11. "Location Map".