Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire

John Marius Wilson described 19th-century Hawkesbury in his Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales as a "tything, a parish, and a sub-district, in Chipping-Sodbury district, Gloucester…has a post office, of the name of Hawkesbury-Upton, under Chippenham, a police station, and a fair on the last Friday of Aug." The population of Hawkesbury at that time was 466 and the town had 108 houses.

[3] Cattle and sheep were important to the livelihood of the residents of Hawkesbury, and a fair was held on the last Friday of August for the sale of those animals.

Homes constructed along streams aided in the wool production industry as it provided water necessary for dying and washing.

The monument was erected in 1846 to commemorate General Lord Edward Somerset, a soldier son of the 5th Duke of Beaufort (whose ancestral home is at Badminton), who had served with distinction at Waterloo.

The first keeper of the monument was Shadrack Byfield, a one-armed veteran of the Anglo-American War of 1812, whose memoirs of that conflict have achieved a measure of fame.