Benson, Oxfordshire

Benson
Parish church of St. Helen
Population	4,500
OS grid reference	SU616917
Civil parish	Benson
District	South Oxfordshire
Shire county	Oxfordshire
Region	South East
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	WALLINGFORD
Postcode district	OX10
Dialling code	01491
Police	Thames Valley
Fire	Oxfordshire
Ambulance	South Central
UK Parliament	Henley
Website	Benson Parish Council

Benson is a village and civil parish in Oxfordshire, with a present population of about 4,500. It is located about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) north of Wallingford at the foot of the Chiltern Hills (close to the Ridgeway, just outside the Chilterns area of outstanding natural beauty) at the confluence of a chalk stream (Ewelme Brook) and the River Thames, next to Benson lock. Because it lies on the northern (eastern) bank of the Thames, Benson has always been in Oxfordshire, unlike nearby Wallingford and Abingdon, Oxfordshire, which were part of Berkshire until the 20th Century. The village is on river silts and gravel, just above the surrounding marshy land that gives nearby settlements of Preston Crowmarsh and Crowmarsh Gifford their names. The fertile land which surrounds the village meant that farming was the main source of employment until the 20th Century.

History

The toponym was originally Villam Regiam, "The King's Town". Later it was Bensington, from the Anglo-Saxon Bænesingtun meaning "farmstead of the people of [a man called] Benesa". The village is reputedly the site of the Battle of Bensington. The present "Benson" was adopnted early in the 19th century.

There is evidence of human presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period - around 10,000 BC). The village occupies the site of an ancient British town and there is known to have been occupation during the Roman period, although Benson’s written history dates back only as far as AD 571.

Recent excavations at the site of a new housing site at the junction of St. Helen’s Avenue and Church Road revealed evidence of early Neolithic (3500 BC) and later Bronze Age/early Iron Age (11th–8th centuries BC) pits and postholes, as well as a possible later Bronze Age roundhouse and three early/ middle Saxon (5th–6th centuries AD) sunken-floored buildings and a small Saxon enclosure.

The village was taken by the West Saxons in 572 AD who established a "Royal Vill". In 775 the West Saxons surrendered it to Offa of Mercia, who wanted a stronghold on the eastern bank of the Thames.

At the time of the Domesday Book (1086) Benson was said to be a royal centre of great importance.

Benson is one of several key sites of the English civil war located within South Oxfordshire, lying between the site of the battle of Chalgrove Field (which took place on the morning of 18 June 1643) and Wallingford Castle, reputedly the last Royalist stronghold to surrender, and close to the Royalist cities of Oxford and Newbury. Oliver Cromwell’s army destroyed Wallingford Castle stone by stone, and the stones were then used to build part of Windsor Castle. At Benson itself, a building is still known as the Court House from the time that King Charles I held court there when en route to Oxford.

The river at Benson gained a flash lock in 1746. Benson weir collapsed in 1783, necessitating the construction of Benson pound lock in 1788. Benson Lock was rebuilt in 1870.

In the late 18th and early 19th centuries Benson became an important staging post for coaches travelling between London and Oxford. At its peak there were four large inns and ten smaller alehouses in the village, as well as a blacksmith.

The decline in coaching, enclosure and the agricultural depression led to a dramatic fall in population, so that the 1831 population of 1300 fell to 960 by 1901.

Among those who moved away was the family of Reginald Robinson Lee, aged about 16 when they moved to Hampshire. Reginald was born in Bensington in 1870, the son of William Lee (schoolmaster) and his wife Jane, and was baptized at the church of St. Helen, Bensington on 19 June 1870. Reginald signed on to the RMS Titanic in Southampton on 6 April 1912, aged 42. He was in the crows' nest with Fred Fleet when the iceberg was sighted at about 11.40 p.m. on 14 April 1912, and survived the tragedy, being rescued in lifeboat 13.

Lee subsequently testified before the Board of Trade inquiry. He died on 6 August 1913 whilst serving aboard the Kenilworth Castle.

The failure to extend the Cholsey and Wallingford Railway to Watlington, which would have meant a station at or close to Benson, left the village increasingly isolated as passenger transport between London and Oxford increasingly went via a railway which ran nowhere near the once-vital coaching stop.

The village recovered as motor coaches (and increasingly private cars) became more important, and Benson gained a number of roadhouse-type cafes - early 20th Century equivalents to the Coaching Inns that had gone before.

The Church of England parish church of Saint Helen is partly ancient. John Marius Wilson described it as "variously late pointed Norman and decorated; has a modern tower; contains a Norman font and two brasses; and is very good." The parish includes the hamlets of Fifield, Roke, and Crowmarsh-Battle or Preston-Crowmarsh.

Benson war memorial

The church tower was rebuilt in 1794. It has a clock on each of the four faces with hours displayed in Roman numerals. On the east-facing side the clock face erroneously has the nine o'clock marker painted as "XI". The eleven o'clock marker is also XI. This mistake gained fame during the Second World War when Germany's English-speaking propaganda broadcaster, William Joyce (Lord Haw Haw) promised an air raid on "an airfield near the village whose clock had two elevens". RAF Benson was bombed soon afterwards.

Amenities

Benson has a Church of England primary school, a pre-school, a doctor's surgery, two public houses (down from five since 1990 - the closed ones having become private homes) and about a dozen small shops, including a supermarket and a dispensing chemist. A large garage and Vauxhall main dealership on the main Oxford road just outside the village has an on-site McDonalds (with drive through) and a Marks and Spencer food outlet.

The brook still runs through the village, and is home to trout and to an invasive species of American crayfish. Though parts of the village remain picturesque, unsympathetic modern development means that it is not "chocolate box pretty" like nearby Dorchester, and aircraft noise can be significant, so property values are low compared to many of the surrounding villages.

The village is also a well-known frost-pocket, sometimes recording the lowest night-time temperatures in the UK. This minor climatic quirk may have led to the village's part in the development of modern meteorology, with an important meteorological observatory being located in the village in the early 19th Century.

Bibliography

• Pevsner, Nikolaus (1974). The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire. Harmondsworth: Penguin. pp. 821–822. ISBN 0 14 071045 0. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Wilson, John Marius (1870–72). Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales. London & Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)CS1 maint: date format (link)