The high ground of Symonds Hall Farm and the Symonds Hall Downs inhabited for a few thousand years. Close to the farm are the remains of burial mounds, known as round and long barrows, where the early people that cultivated this land buried their dead. Just a small number of items, have been found from the past, arrowheads, a spoon and the gravestone of a young woman. Some years back on the Symonds Hall Downs a Roman carved stone which was found, is believed to be a Roman Mile stone.

The Romans landed on the coast of England in A.D. 43, stayed for a few hundred years, and left their mark around the Cotswolds. Small cubes of mosaic where found in fields around the Symonds Hall Farm area. To the north of the farm is the site of a Roman-British town part of it, was excavated in the 1970’s.

Symonds Hall Farm, may have taken its name from a Saxon farmer, it was originally called Sigmunds Hale.

The Berkeley family owned the property from 1328. In medieval time, it was the centre of a small manor of Lord Berkeley with it’s own Chapel; the field at the front of the farm is believed to have been called the churchyard. Thomas II stayed at the manor on his way back to Berkeley Castle. Symonds Hall Downs was open country in the middle ages, were flocks of Cotswold sheep grazed, for their use in the Cotswold woollen industry. Both the Berkeley’s and the monks from the Kingswood Abbey below Wotton-under-Edge, used the land for grazing their sheep.
In 1558 the property was sold off, on the death of Henry Berkeley, and ceased to be a separate manor. The property then became the largest of the Wotton-under-Edge farms, leased to a tenant.

The Symonds Hall Farm as we see it today, is believed to have been built in the Seventeen Century, of random rubble stone walls, faced with rough cast. With a Cotswold stone roof with two gables, and Diagonal stone chimneys. The farm has historical connections with the Civil War 1642-1646. Parliamentary forces captured Berkeley Castle it’self, in 1643 during the Civil War. In the Eighteen Century travelling after dark was a risk, particularly over Symonds Hall, and the old London road from Wotton. In 1759 William Veal of Symonds Hall Farm, riding home from Dursley on a Friday night, was robbed of his watch and Twenty pounds.

The crossroads beyond the farm were the Wotton-under-Edge and Dursley roads meet, was once a meeting place for convoys of packhorses and wagons, either going towards London with their goods or returning home. “Symonds Hall News” was once the local name for any far-fetched rumour.

From Wudetun to Wotton-under-Edge.

In the year 940 Wudetun seems to have been part of the royal domain of the house of Berkeley, which stretched from the river Seven to Symonds Hall. For quit a few years nothing was heard of Wudetun, but in 1086 it is mentioned as Vutune, being part of the royal manor of Berkeley, in the Domesday survey and formerly owned by King Edward the Confessor. Over the years Vutune became known as Wuttun or Wutton. The name Wotton- under-Edge as we see it today was not heard of until 1359.The 1763 map of the Berkeley Estate shows the open country around Symonds Hall. At the end of the Eighteen century the Cotswold walls were built to enclosed the fields.

The 1851 census of Symonds Hall Farm shows James Nicolas as the farmer, with 800 acres and Twenty-eight men working on the farm.
The 1881 census of Symonds Hall Farm shows John Daniell as the farmer, with 667 acres and nine labourers.
In 2003 Mr and Mrs Robert Grey and their family are farming the land today.

Terry Luker