Benham Park

The manor of Benham Valence was granted by Elizabeth I to Giovanni Battista Castiglione, her Italian tutor, in 1570.

The building was three storeys high, nine bays wide, in a plain neoclassical style, of stone, with a tetrastyle Ionic portico.

The servants quarters (on the top left hand side of the house behind the loggia) were also demolished due to poor structural condition.

However, 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.

[3][4] The park itself is Grade II listed and has a lake with a mill beside the house and aqueducts or artificial drains leading across marshy wetland to the River Kennet to the far south.