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Summary

Registered 18th century landscape park GD1072, designed by Capability Brown at an existing park, with later alterations

Associated Legal Designations or Protected Status

• Registered Park or Garden (II) 1000173: Benham Park
• Listed Building (II) 1220639: BENHAM PARK, EAST LODGE
• Listed Building (II) 1220640: SMALL LODGE APPROXIMATELY 20 METRES TO NORTH WEST OF BENHAM PARK EAST LODGE
• Listed Building (II) 1220643: GATE PIERS AND GATES AT BENHAM PARK, EAST LODGE
• Conservation Area: Benham Park

Other Statuses and Cross-References

• Berkshire SMR No. (pre 2000): 04134.00.000
  
• National Monuments Record No.: SU 46 NW 102
  SU 4392 6743

Monument Type(s):

• LANDSCAPE PARK (18th century - 1751 AD? to 1780 AD)
• ORNAMENTAL GARDEN (18th century to Late 19th century - 1770 AD to 1900 AD)

Full Description

A Registered 18th century landscape park, at its most extensive about 150ha, surrounds the mansion of Benham Park <1>. The gardens were designed by Capability Brown working in partnership with Henry Holland as the house's architect, although some designed landscape existed prior to the 1770s; both the Speen Manor map <2> and Rocque's map <3> show some avenues. Woodland exists along the northern boundary. Brown's scheme for landscaping involved extensive open parkland and lake with pleasure grounds. This was maintained, while in the 19th century a formal garden scheme was developed with rising terraces, with single and double stairs to top gate piers. This work was possibly by William Andrews Nesfield dating to the 1870s. A walled garden exists to the southwest of the house.

There are many features described in the Registered Park text <1> which are not yet specifically located and recorded in the HER: these include the site of a former temple and the remains of an amphitheatre cut in the hillside below the temple. The text also makes no mention of the fact that there is documentary evidence for a deer park at Benham (MWB16177), or of the former mausoleum to the Margrave of Anspach (MWB17768). An appraisal was also carried out in 2002 of an outbuilding which housed what might have been an 18th century cold bath <6> but this building was not noted in the Registered Park description, or in a 1993 report by landscape architects <5>.

A late 18th century traveller from Newbury to Hungerford expressed pleasure with "a superb gateway, and lodges, leading through a beautiful plantation, to a modern and elegant mansion, which I found to be one of the feats of the Craven Family" <9>.

Sources and further reading

Related Monuments

Associated Excavations and Fieldwork

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