A Fine Pair # 1223 ~ Upper Bentley Traditional Geocache

Number 1223 in a series of caches where a red telephone box is in close proximity to a post box.

The only rules are that they have to be able to be photographed together, be not more than 100’ apart and the phone boxes have to be red.

Whilst visiting the nearby SDC series, we spotted this exceptionally Fine Pair, just had to be celebrated.

Please bring your own pen and tweezers.

Bentley-Pauncefoot, or Lower and Upper Bentley, a township in Tardebigge parish, Worcestershire, 3 miles SW of Redditch, and 4 SSE of Bromsgrove, which is the post town. Acreage, 1688; population, 230. There is a small church at Lower Bentley, a chapel of ease to the parish church of Tardebigge. Bentley Manor, the seat of the lord of the manor, was the residence of Sir Thomas Cooke, Bart., the founder of Worcester College, Oxford.

Bentley was originally a chapelry, and the foundations of the ancient chapel, dedicated to St. Stephen, have been traced. At Lower Bentley there is a small church of red brick, consisting of chancel and nave only, in which divine worship was held on Sunday afternoons at 3 o'clock, by the vicar of Tardebigge: there are 100 sittings.

Bentley Manor dates back to before 1300 when it stood in Feckenham Forest. Rights of warren were granted to a Grimbald Pauncefoote in the manor of Bentley in 1281 for rabbits.[1]

The Bentley Estate came into being when William Hemming bought the land from Mr. John Cookes in Approximately 1830. Upon Williams death in 1848 the land and property went to his son Richard Hemming. Richard died in 1891, leaving the Estate to his Daughter Maude. Maude married a Scotsman named George Clark Cheape. Mrs Cheape (known as the Squire of Bentley) was known for her love of hunting and kept a pack of Beagles in the village. After losing her son, who drowned in 1917, Maude died in 1919 leaving the Estate to her Grandson Leslie. Colenel Gray Cheape (as Leslie was formally known) died in 1991 and the estate passed into the hands of his grandchildren.

Maude Ellis, the youngest daughter of Mrs. Cheape, lived here until her death in 1942, the house was then taken over by the War Office where prisoners of war were billeted. Unfortunately the building had to be pulled down in the 1950s as the structure had suffered from dry rot.

The village school was built in 1882 and owned by the estate. It closed in 1960 and the children had to be educated at the larger schools in Redditch. The building was given to the village in 1962 following an extension to include a large hall and kitchen and Colonel Gray Cheape officially declared the Village Hall as open.

In 2009, Bentley Village Hall was refurbished thanks to a TV appeal and money from The People's Millions. It was officially opened in December by Bentley's longest-standing resident, Diana Gibbs.