Griggs Pit

Griggs Pit is in Burges ‘Coomb at the end of Willets Lane in West End and the remains of one of the cottages still stands.

Rookery Farm, Ivy cottage and Coles Farms are close by and are still occupied. The last people to live in the derelict cottage were the Symes family but the Uphills also lived nearby.

What is now the ruins of Symes Cottage was in what looks like plot 882 in the 1794 map. The larger buildings in plot 579 may have been one location for Burges Farm but the roughness of the terrain in the bottom of the coombe means the buildings were probably never more than simple cottages.

The 1839 map shows there was a building on the site of Symes cottage but the buildings in plot 579 had already gone. Either site may have been the cottage occupied by the Atwoods in 1740.

Symes Cottage was then occupied by William Edwards. The 1839 map shows a cottage at the junction of Willets Lane that is not shown in the 1794 map but the outline of that coattge can still be seen in the undergrowth. That was occupied by George Edwards.

Syndney and William Symes can be seen as children in the 1892 school class photograph

Mrs Symes hosted a number of an evacuees during World War Two and Ken Church remembers delivering post to both the Symes and Uphill families in the 1950s.