Bentworth Hall
| Bentworth Hall | |
| Hampshire | |
|---|---|
 Bentworth Hall | |
| Location | |
| Grid reference: | SU66563915 |
| Location: | 51°8’52"N, 1°2’59"W |
| History | |
| Built 1832 | |
| For: | Roger Staples Horman-Fisher |
| Information | |
Bentworth Hall is a country house by Bentworth in Hampshire, found about a mile south of Bentworth village centre and four miles north-west of Alton, the nearest town.
The house was built in 1832 for Roger Staples Horman-Fisher.
The original mediaeval Bentworth Hall or Bentworth Manor House, the predecessor to the current hall, is now called Hall Place. The original house was built in the early 14th century and served as the manor house until superseded by the current house in 1832. Hal Place is a Grade II* listed building.[1] It stands a hundred yards south of the village green and is surrounded by woodland that was planted during building which started in 1832, after Roger Staples Horman-Fisher purchased the Bentworth Manor estate.
History
In 1832, the Bentworth Hall estate of about 500 acres was sold at an auction Garraway's Coffee House in the City of London by the Fitzherbert family. It was purchased by Roger Staples Horman-Fisher for about £6,000.
Horman-Fisher started building the current Bentworth Hall on what was then open downland about half a mile south of the earlier Bentworth Hall, with access by a thousand-yard private drive from the Bentworth-Medstead road.[2]
In 1848 the Bentworth Hall estate was sold to Jeremiah Robert Ives, including the Old Manor House (now Hall Place) and the more recent Bentworth Hall. The sale catalogue dated 16 July 1848[3] includes the following rather exaggerated description:
"A handsome newly erected Elizabethan (sic) mansion of unique elevation with wall garden, elegant conservatory and stabling. The mansion is built in the most substantial manner and finished without reference to expense, by the proprietor for his own residence. The walls are constructed almost entirely of BLACK FLINT (emphasised in capitals in the original), carefully and minutely cut and smoothed at an incalculable cost, with Stone Cornices, mullions &C blending a beautiful and unique specimen of workmanship with a suitability and durability impenetrable to every change of atmosphere. Six airy and cheerful Family Bedrooms, spacious landing and a broad light principle (sic) staircase leads to the Ground Floor on which is another water closet. This floor comprises a neat vestibule, with a porch at the northwest entrance for the carriage road; a handsome inner hall; surrounded by a library and a breakfast room, elegant drawing room 23 feet by 18 feet. A dining room of the same size, all 12 feet high finished with expensive cornices, handsome modern marble chimney pieces and other decorations."
Robert Ives died in 1865 and the estate passed to his widow Emma. In 1890, Emma's son, Colonel Gordon Maynard Gordon-Ives built and lived in Gaston Grange, just under a mile west of Bentworth Hall. Seven years later he inherited the estate.
Colonel Gordon-Ives rented Bentworth Hall to William Graham Nicholson, Member of Parliament for Petersfield. Cecil Maynard Gordon-Ives, a Captain in the Scots Guards in the Great War, occupied the house until his death on 23 July 1923, following which the estate, then of 479 acres, was sold in seven lots. It was sold again in 1930, with 462 acres.
At the beginning of the war, the Bentworth Hall estate was taken over by the military together with other local large houses and estates such as Gaston Grange and Thedden Grange. In 1941 Bentworth Hall was occupied by a unit of the Mobile Naval Base Defence Organisation as an out-station of Haslar Naval Hospital in Portsmouth. The bedrooms were the wards and there was a doctor's office upstairs.
In 1944 Bentworth Hall was occupied by American and British Commonwealth personnel. A swimming pool had been put in, also two cookhouses and a water tower. Huts in the woods were for accommodation although some officers lived in the Hall itself. The cornfield to the south-west was an airstrip with 3 L4 light aircraft.
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.[4] In 1950, Major Berens built two new lodge houses at the junction of the drive to Bentworth Hall with the main road through the village towards Medstead. He also built an extension to the south of the centre of Bentworth Hall itself.
After Major Berens died in 1981, the remaining estate was put up for sale, divided into five residential units.
The garden
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Stella Strachan, a keen gardener who bought a pat of the hall, further developed the West Wing garden, particularly re-furbishing the sunken garden south-west of the West Wing that had originally been installed in late Victorian times.
The Bentworth Garden Club[5] was formed in 2001 after the Bentworth area Millennium survey had identified a desire for such an organisation.
The West Wing garden is opened for special events associated with the Bentworth Garden Club and other local organisations.
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1338928: Hall Farmhouse (Grade II* listing)
- ↑ Smith, Georgia (June 1988). Bentworth: the making of a Hampshire village. Bentworth Parochial Church Council. pp. 52–55. ISBN 978-0-9513653-0-4. https://books.google.com/books?id=4xqLAAAACAAJ. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
- ↑ copy in Hampshire record office
- ↑ Grossman, David (1972). Who's Who in British Finance. R. R. Bowker Co.. ISBN 9780716100751. https://books.google.com/books?id=39YiAQAAIAAJ. Retrieved 14 February 2012.
- ↑ The Garden Club: Bentworth Parish Council