Yeatton House

Yeatton House, near Downton, was built in about 1840 by Capt Thomas Symonds (1781-1868). Thomas entered the navy as a young midshipman and rose through the ranks to command his own ship, the Tweed. He was so attached to her that he named his house in Boldre ‘Tweed’. 

While serving in the Tweed at the blockade of San Domingo in the West Indies in 1809, Symonds rescued two young French orphan girls. Lucinde and Zebee Touzi were twins trying to escape from the fighting between the British, French and slave population on the island.

Symonds took them back to England where his sisters looked after them at Newlands during the school holidays. He eventually married Lucinde in 1815. Together they had 10 children. Symonds remained in the navy rising to the rank of Rear-Admiral. Symond’s sister Theresa married another naval officer, Captain Whitby, and on the death of her husband lived with Admiral Cornwallis at Newlands, inheriting the estate in 1819.

In 1884 Howard Ward, JP bought Yeatton House, then called Yeatton Grange. He enlarged the house and extended the estate. He was succeeded by his daughter Mrs Herbert Reynolds in 1909 and in 1921 by another daughter Mrs AH Cowie and her husband General Cowie.

The following photos are from the Cowie family album.

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