Place Name
Named after the Bendish family, Lords of the Manor of East Ham from 1650. Robert Bendish’s wife, Mary, inherited the title and its lands from her father, Francis Heigham. From there it was passed to her son Heigham Bendish and when he died in 1723 to his son also called Heigham who held on to it until his death in 1746. The title and lands were in turn passed to his widow Frances who remarried to a Dr Richard Wilkes, although she outlived him by 38 years, dying in 1798, having, in 1765, sold the property some five years after he died to Charles Hitch.
