Benham Park

Benham Park is a mansion (on the site of Benham Valence Manor) in the English ceremonial county of Berkshire and district of West Berkshire. It is 2 miles (3.2 km) west of Newbury within 500m of a junction of the A34 trunk road Newbury by-pass outside the town side, in the Marsh Benham locality of Speen, a village within and outside the Newbury by-pass. The house is a Grade II* listed building and park is Grade II.

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 in 1774-1775 by William Craven, 6th Baron Craven, and was designed by the architect Henry Holland. Benham Park was three storeys high, nine bays wide, in a plain neoclassical style, of stone, with a tetrastyle Ionic portico. The interiors have been altered. 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 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 their poor condition.

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

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