Benhall is a small district within the town of Cheltenham,

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

. It lies south-west of the town centre, just south of the A40, the main road to Gloucester, and north of the district of Up Hatherley. It falls mainly within the Anglican parish of St Mark. Much of the area consists of the Benhall (originally Benhall Farm) Estate, developed mainly in the late 1950s and early 1960s on land that had previously been farmland (mainly pasture), and takes its name from the farm that formerly stood there (at the site of the current Notgrove Close). The district is divided in two by a stream with steep banks, surrounded by a narrow area of grass and woodland. Many of the roads are named after villages in the surrounding countryside. "

Robert Burns Robert Burns (25 January 175921 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who hav ...

Avenue" was named after the Scottish poet, after complaints that he was not among the poets with roads named after them in the older St Mark's estate (Tennyson, Byron, Shakespeare, etc.), even though he had a personal link with Cheltenham (his sons retired to the town). St Mark's Church of England Junior School and Benhall Infants School, along with a playgroup, are located on Robert Burns Avenue in Benhall. The last census recorded the population of Benhall at 3260. The area has an active residents' association. In local government it forms part of the ward of Benhall and the Reddings. The population of this Ward in the 2011 Census was 5,071. There are 1,362 households within the Benhall district and an average unemployment rate of 1.7

Benhall is the location of '

The Doughnut The Doughnut is the nickname given to the headquarters of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British cryptography and intelligence agency. It is located on a site in Benhall, in the suburbs of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, in ...

', the nickname given to the headquarters of the

Government Communications Headquarters Government Communications Headquarters, commonly known as GCHQ, is an intelligence and security organisation responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance (IA) to the government and armed forces of the Uni ...

(GCHQ), the British intelligence agency who specialise in signals intelligence and cryptography.

References

External links

Benhall Residents' Association contact details
- Cheltenham Partnership web site
Benhall area guide
- Cheltenham4u web site Benhall {{Gloucestershire-geo-stub