Benson is a village and civil parish in South Oxfordshire, England. The 2011 Census gave the parish population as 4,754. It lies about a mile and a half (2.4 km) north of Wallingford at the foot of the Chiltern Hills, where a chalk stream, Ewelme Brook, joins the River Thames next to Benson Lock.
Geography
Benson, on the north and east banks of the Thames, was unaffected by the 1974 boundary changes between Berkshire and Oxfordshire. It rests on river silts and gravel, just above surrounding marshy land named in the nearby settlements of Preston Crowmarsh, Crowmarsh Gifford, and Rokemarsh. The fertile land surrounding Benson meant that farming was the main source of employment until the 20th century. The brook through the village is home to trout and to the invasive American signal crayfish.
History
Etymology
The place-name Benson is first attested in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which took its present form in the latter half of the ninth century, in the forms Bænesingtun and Benesingtun. Instances where the name is mentioned include the Battle of Bedcanford, which supposedly took place in 571 and led to Britons ceding Benson to someone called Cuthwulf, but the historicity of this event is uncertain. The name is thought to derive from a personal name Benesa, combined with the suffix - (here indicating Benesa's possession of the place), and the word (meaning 'estate'). Thus it once meant "farmstead of Benesa". In the period 1140–1315 the name appears as Besinton (and similar forms), and Benston in 1526. The present from of the name, Benson, appears early in the nineteenth century, but Bensington continued in use, at least in formal documents, into the second half of the century. The 1866 Working Agreement made by the Great Western Railway for its Wallingford–Watlington line used the older form.
Archaeology
Evidence of human presence has been found dating back to the Mesolithic period – about 10,000 BCE. The village occupies the site of an ancient British town known also to have been occupied in the Roman period, although Benson's written history dates back only to 571 CE Recent excavation for a housing site at the junction of St Helen's Avenue and Church Road revealed evidence of early Neolithic (3500 BCE) and later Bronze Age or early Iron Age (11th – 8th centuries BCE) pits and post holes, with a possible later Bronze Age roundhouse and three early or mid-Saxon (5th – 6th centuries CE) sunken-floored buildings.
Medieval manor
In 779 the estate was, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. taken from Wessex by Offa of Mercia following the Battle of Bensington. It was certainly a royal manor by the 880s. At the time of the 1086 Domesday Book, Benson was "the richest royal manor in Oxfordshire". The manor boundaries ran from the borders of Stadhampton in the north to include Henley in the south-east and were probably set long before the Conquest. Domesday rates that manor at £85 a year, although it comprised only 11.75 hides, while the Bishop of Lincoln's 90 hides at Dorchester were valued at only £30. Benson itself was clearly the most valuable part of the manor. The map shows Benson parish as only about a tenth of the area of Benson manor, but Domesday values it alone at £30, compared with £5 for the neighbouring parish of Berrick.
Parish church
The Church of England parish church of St Helen is partly ancient. John Marius Wilson described it: "variously late pointed Norman and decorated; has a modern tower; contains a Norman font and two [monumental] brasses; and is very good." The church parish includes the hamlets of Fifield and Crowmarsh-Battle or Preston-Crowmarsh. The village is often confused with RAF Benson, which is a well-known RAF station and airfield. The airfield boundary is adjacent to the village, and the aerodrome's construction closed the former "London Road". The RAF buildings are on the opposite side of the airfield to Benson village, adjacent to the village of Ewelme.
The church tower was rebuilt in 1794. It has a single clock-face on the east-facing side, with hours displayed in Roman numerals. The clock face erroneously has the nine o'clock marker marked as "XI", as is the eleven o'clock marker correctly. This mistake gained fame in 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.