Hall Place

In the 1086 Domesday Survey that was ordered by the first Norman king, William the Conqueror, Bentworth is listed as a parish in the Domesday entry for the Hundred of Odiham. Soon after Domesday, Bentworth became an independent manor in its own right. In about 1111 it was given by King Henry I "Beauclerc", the youngest son of William the Conqueror, together with four other English manors, to the diocese of Rouen and Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. When King John began losing his possessions in Normandy he took back the ownership of many manors, including Bentworth. He then temporarily ceded the manor of Bentworth in 1207–8 to the Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches. It was John who signed…

Hall Place (the former Bentworth Hall or Manor) is a Grade II* listed medieval manor house, located along the main road of Bentworth. It was built in the early 14th century, with extensive additions in the 17th and 19th centuries. The hall is believed to have been constructed by either the constable of Farnham Castle, William de Aula, or John of Bynteworth (Bentworth), and served for some time as the manor court. with a Gothic stone arch and 20th-century boarded door and two-storey porch. The west wing of the house has a stone-framed upper window and very large attached tapered stack. The east wing has sashes dated to the early 19th century. The old fireplace remains in the north-facing…

In about 1800, Mary Fitzherbert (who had 11 children) became owner of the Bentworth Hall Estate and in 1832, the Estate was put up for auction by the Fitzherbert family. The auction was held at Garraway's Coffee House in Exchange Alley in the City of London, and was sold to Roger Staples Horman Fisher for about £6000. Almost immediately he started building the present Bentworth Hall about a mile south of the old Manor House on what was then open downland. In 1841, wall paintings were discovered in Hall Place. These were described in a letter to Roger Horman Fisher with the postmark 17 November 1841. It was stamped: "1D Paid" (1D = one old penny, 1/240 of a pound) and addressed to: "R Horman…