Little Bentley is a village and

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authorit ...

in the

Tendring Tendring is a village and civil parish in Essex. It gives its name to the Tendring District and before that the Tendring Hundred. Its name was given to the larger groupings because it was at the centre, not because it was larger than the other ...

district of

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and Grea ...

, England. It sits on rising ground just to the west of the Holland Brook. In the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

troops and Commandoes sometimes encamped locally, and there was a control post for the anti-aircraft guns around the nearby Gt Bromley radar station. A number of Allied aircraft force-landed in the large field south of the Church, including an American B17 bomber. Several V1 flying bombs also hit the parish. The Hall, south west of the Church, was once a larger building. It has a large game wood, made up mainly of coppiced chestnut trees. The Hall is nowadays noted for its annual garden show, making use of water features fed by streams from the wood. In the hamlet of Ravens' Green, 2 miles from the village centre, is a large house formerly known as "the Gamekeepers", for many decades a pub. Little Bentley is also the home of the Little Bentley Park Polo Club.

St Mary the Virgin church

St Mary, Little Bentley, from south-east

The church is dedicated to Saint Mary. The living is in the gift of

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

. The Church is mainly 13th century on the north side, and 17th on the south. It has a 60-foot medieval tower with ancient bells. The nave roof is original medieval timber, and features rows of beams carved into angels, but with heads cut off during the Civil War by Puritan iconoclasts led by

William Dowsing William Dowsing (1596–1668), also known as "Smasher Dowsing", was an English puritan, and was a particularly notable iconoclast at the time of the English Civil War.G. Goodwin, 'Dowsing, William (?1596-?1679), iconoclast', ''Dictionary of Natio ...

. The east end has three stained glass lancet windows, and between chancel and nave a small door and features in the walls indicate the position of a pre-Reformation rood screen. A large royal arms, painted on a diamond-shape timber board, and a 16th-century helmet, are among contents which were stolen – or removed because of the risk of theft – in the 1970s.

References

External links

Village History
Little Bentley Hall
Church of St Mary, Church Road, Little Bentley
Images of England
Great and Little Bentley entry
Post Office Directory of Essex, Herts, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex, London: Kelly, 1855 Villages in Essex Civil parishes in Essex Tendring {{essex-geo-stub