The Saracens Head, Symonds Yat East (General)

by Jefff , West London, Middlesex, Friday, January 27, 2012, 15:39 (4687 days ago) @ fredb

A couple of past Landlords according to
http://www.easywell.co.uk/pubs/publist/outsidegloucestershire.htm

Saracens Head, Symond's Yat.
HR9 6JL

The Saracens Head is still trading.

Landlord:
1876 William Goode
1939 Mrs A. J. Jones

Further Goggling gives several websites for & about the pub although sadly none give any historical information, bar mentioning it dates from the C16th OR? C17th and has a rope ferry. Heres a 1912 photo
http://www.forest-of-dean.net/gallery/symonds_yat/pages/page_3.html

then some good recent photos;
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/590934
http://www.wyenot.com/symondsyat.htm

"At Symonds Yat, in the gorge west of the rock, most early houses were on the west side of the river, in Whitchurch parish, where ironworks were built in the 17th century. The settlement, which included houses on the east side of the river on former extraparochial land and on land belonging to Goodrich, was also called New Weir after a weir constructed there in the 1660s. On the extraparochial land, where two cottages were pulled down, probably in the 1630s, on the orders of Crown officials, a lock keeper's house was built near the weir when work to improve the Wye navigation began in the mid 1690s. In the late 18th century a ferry crossed the river below the weir to the ironworks."

From: 'English Bicknor', A History of the County of Gloucester: Volume 5: Bledisloe Hundred, St. Briavels Hundred, The Forest of Dean (1996), pp. 101-117.
URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=23254&strquery=symonds yat ferry Date accessed: 27 January 2012.