Telepathy with a Cat! (lol)

[LPC]

Tobi, in the west country words are often "softened" and/or abbreviated in pronounciation - as you no doubt know. One famous example is the town Cirencester in Gloucestershire, which used to be pronounced by locals as "Sis-it-er" in the earlier twentieth century but is these days usually pronounced more or less as it is spelt (my mother lived there as a girl). In the same way, Gloucester is usually pronounced "Glostu" (with the u like in "up").

The elision of the letter T in Burton sounds very Somerset ("Zummerzet") to me; you would know about that, though, better than I do! I did a study of Dorset (Darzet) dialect and pronunciation many years ago and it has similar features.

So Bu(rt)on sounding like Ben, sounds very likely to me!