The Kings Weston estate was extensive, with landholdings well beyond the confines of the parkland surrounding the house. Some of this land was framed directly by the estate from the Home Farm, but hundreds of acres of it were separated into farms rented from the estate. Whilst many of these pre-existing the arrival of the Southwell’s at the house in 1675, successive family members sought to improve the land and build substantial farm premises to support their tenant farmers
The third Edward Southwell, the 20th baron de Clifford, (1738-1777) appears to have had a particularly improving impact on his estates. He came into his inheritance at an early age and the estate was placed in the hands of trustees while he was in his minority. He returned from a Grand Tour of Europe to take control of Kings Weston in 1762, immediately turning his attention to refurbishing the house and rebuilding the out-buildings for his new wife, Sophia, but appears also to have focussed investment on rebuilding a number of his agricultural holdings.
Most of the farms were spread out below Kings Weston house on the Severn plain, running up to the estuary banks. Centuries of drainage works and flood defences had created fertile fields which were packaged into farms of varying size. Southwell built, and rebuilt the majority of these on modern models, both farmhouses and yards. Many buildings from this period survive today, but perhaps the best preserved is Campbell Farm in Lawrence Weston. It was originally the lowermost collection of buildings that constituted Kings Weston as a hamlet, strung out down the lane before the open agricultural land commenced.
All of the farms were given family names related to Southwell’s ancestors, such as Ardglass and Katherine farms after his mother and her line. In an unlikely romantic gesture, Campbell Farm was named after his wife’s family name. It was perhaps the finest of the farms on the Kings Weston estate, more extensive even than the Home Farm and with an impressive series of barns, byres, and out buildings rebuilt in the 1760s.
The farm remained intact even after sale in 1937 following the death of the last private owner of Kings Weston house, Philip Napier Miles, but it was not to last. After WWII much of the land was requisitioned by the city Council for the building of Lawrence Weston Estate. Many of the other cottages and buildings of Kings Weston hamlet were demolished, but Campbell Farm was spared. Miscategorised by Historic England when it was Listed as “Mid-Nineteenth Century”, its importance has been somewhat overlooked. Now sandwiched between the post-war housing and the hinterland of motorways and slip-roads that border it to the north, the buildings survive, converted to homes and small businesses, but still with some of the charm of the Georgian era.
