Reverend E. R. Benyon
(1802-1883)

Volume 1, page 115, sitting number 663.

A carte-de-visite portrait of Reverend Edward Richard Benyon of Culford Hall, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, and 33 Portman Square, London.

Benyon, who was the nephew of Richard Benyon de Beauvoir, was born in Switzerland and became a naturalized British subject. In 1825 he graduated from St John's College, Cambridge. Throughout his long career, he was Rector of Culford, Ingham, and Timworth, the combined gross income of which came to £960 per annum. In addition, he was also Lord of the Manor of the three parishes, and owned nearly 12,000 acres in Culford, Ingham, West Stow, Wordwell, and Timworth. His uncle, Richard Benyon de Beauvoir of Englefield House, Berkshire, and Culford Hall, left a staggering seven and a half million pounds in real and personal property.

On 5 October 1830 at Eyton in Herefordshire he married Jane Evans, only daughter of Edward Evans, Esq., of Eyton Hall (Morning Post, 7 October 1830).

Reverend Benyon appears on the 1881 census, a widower living at Culford Hall in Suffolk. He had thirteen servants to look after him. 

Reverend Edward Richard Benyon died on 7 July 1883 at his London residence, 33 Portman Square. He left an estate valued at £50,167.

A lenghty obituary appeared in the Bury and Norwich Post (10 July 1883). 'The late Mr Benyon was in all respects a thoroughly upright, generous, hospitable, and kind-hearted English country gentleman, a keen sportsman almost to the last, a good practical farmer, and possessed of a thorough knowledge of all that relates to the management of landed property. He was distinguished by his perfect good taste, was of a diffident and retiring disposition, and shrunk from taking that part in public affairs which his capacities and social position entitled him to assume.'