Murder at Benham Park
In 2021, Berkshire was shocked by the murder of Sir Richard Sutton, the owner of Elizabeth Craven's beloved home, Benham Place, or Benham Park as it is now known, near Speen, Newbury.
Sir Richard had bought the house in 2017 after its skilful restoration by a team of Georgian enthusiasts.
Few people realize that Sir Richard Lexington Sutton was a direct descendant of the Sir Richard Sutton who owned Benham in the nineteenth century. Indeed, it appears that when Sir Richard bought the estate in 2017, he was not only buying back the home of his ancestors, but the same estate he had previously, in 1981, sold.
Sir Richard Sutton who was murdered in 2021 aged 83.
In 1848, the Benham estate was bought by Frederick Villebois from Richard Keppel Craven, who had inherited it from his mother. Then in 1868 on Villebois's death it was bought by Sir Richard Sutton, 4th Baronet, who enlarged the house considerably adding an extra storey. He left the house to his son, Sir Richard Frances Sutton, 5th Baronet, who added an extra wing, ruining its classical symmetry in the process.
The fifth baronet left the house to his son Sir Richard Vincent Sutton, 6th Baronet, who was wounded in the First World War and died in 1918. So the estate then passed to his uncle, who became Sir Arthur Edwin Sutton, 7th Baronet. Sir Arthur Edwin Sutton was the father of Sir Robert Lexington Sutton, 8th baronet, who was the father of Sir Richard Lexington Sutton. The latter seems to have sold Benham when he inherited it in 1981, but then in 2017 re-purchased it. It was now named Benham Park. He found the house restored to something more like its Georgian proportions, and was living there throughout the Covid lockdown.
Arthur Charles Fox-Davies, Armorial Families: A Directory of Gentlemen of Coat-armour (1910) Page 1553.
http://pdf.savills.com/documents/Benham_Park_2017_Savills_(Spreads).pdf
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