Richard Benyon de Beauvoir

 

The monument to Richard Benyon who died in 1854 was erected by his successor Richard Fellows and shows the three Marys at the sepulchre. It may have been designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott for in a letter to Fellowes in 1855 he refers to drawings for a monument.

 

Richard Benyon was the son of Richard and Hannah Benyon and was the first Benyon to make Englefield his main residence. He took the name de Beauvoir in 1822 when he inherited the de Beauvoir estates in Downham, Essex and Hackney in Middlesex through his grandmother Mary Tyssen. He married Elizabeth Sykes, daughter of Sir Francis Sykes of Basildon Park who, like Benyon’s grandfather had had a distinguished career in India.

 

Richard Benyon continued the work on Cranemoor Lake started by Powlett Wrighte and it reached its fullest extent during his time, certainly by 1844. He also continued the process of diverting roads away from Englefield when he caused the road up Blythe’s Hill to be extended beyond its junction with Beenham Lane down to the Bourne Bridge. In the other direction he built a new road from Parker’s Corner to the Bath Road. He also closed Powlett Wrighte’s Tidmarsh turnpike after building a new, straight road from the Bath Road to Hogmoor Bridge. The intention was to be able to close the road to Bradfield that ran along the back of Englefield House under the Long Gallery but this ambition was not realised until after his death when the New Road was opened between Chalkpit to Bradfield.

 

He was also responsible for the removal of the village centre away from the Park and Appleton’s Corner,  building five pairs of new houses along a new alignment of the road to North Street and others elsewhere around the greater estate.

 

Benyon de Beauvoir died childless and his successor Richard Fellowes was the second son of his sister Emma and her husband W H Fellowes of Haveringland Hall in Norfolk. Richard Fellowes took the name Benyon as a condition of inheritance.

Monuments