page_title: Bentworth Hall
section_title: After the War
hierarchical_section_title: Bentworth Hall / After the War
caption_attribution_description: English: Daffodils at Bentworth Hall
context_page_description: Bentworth Hall is a country house in the parish of Bentworth in Hampshire, England. It is about 1 mile south of Bentworth village centre and 4 miles northwest of Alton, the nearest town.
  Before the 1830s, the building called Bentworth Hall or Bentworth Manor House is now re-named Hall Place.
  It was built in the early 14th century and is a Grade II listed building. It lies 330 feet south of the village green. The current Bentworth Hall is surrounded by woodland that was planted during building which started in 1832, after Roger Staples Horman-Fisher purchased the Bentworth Manor estate.
context_section_description: An ordnance disposal unit operated in the corner of the wood near the field to the south, towards Colliers Wood.  Ordnance was taken to the hollow or "dell" in the field and detonated there.
  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, 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 with tall windows down to ground level facing south west. The walls of the extension matched the squared flint of the main building, and the extension was known as the "Garden Rooms" – compare the photo of the south side in 1983 with earlier photos.
  Major Berens was a keen game shooter and each year his keeper raised pheasants in the old stable and coach block before the young birds were put into the woods. There was accommodation for the keeper in the stable block with one downstairs and one upstairs room.  In the 1970s the keeper was "Ginger" Woods, a well-known village character who also lived in house on the road between Bentworth and Medstead near the cricket pitch, land that was owned by the Berens family.
  Major Berens died at Bentworth Hall on 27 October 1981 and after this the remaining estate was put up for sale.
  The hall was first offered as a single property but this did not sell, part of the building being in a dilapidated state with leaks in the roof and plaster fallen off the walls, particularly in the centre section of the Hall.
  It was then offered for sale as five so-called "dwelling units" with the main house split into three units, each with several bedrooms, and the old stable block divided into two units.
  Sales of the five units commenced in 1983, the Strachan family being the first to move in to the West Wing in March 1983.  Wing Commander Ian Strachan MBE AFC was then serving as a Squadron Commander at the Ministry of Defence flight test establishment at Boscombe Down near Amesbury in Wiltshire, and later commuted from Bentworth to the Ministry of Defence in Whitehall before retiring in 1993.
  In 1983, the Bentworth Hall stable block to the NE was still stabling with hay still in some of the mangers and there was a large wooden door at the NE end which in the past would have been used for horse-drawn coaches.  Later in 1983 the stable block was bought by the Varleys who converted it into two dwellings that were called The Coach House and Stable Cottage.
   
  Stella Strachan is a keen gardener and further developed the West Wing garden, particularly re-furbishing the sunken garden SW of the West Wing that had originally been installed in late Victorian times.
  She is also founder chairman of the Bentworth Garden Club that 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.
caption: Daffodils at Bentworth Hall in 2016
exif: {}