A Hidden Valley With a Story
Tucked away in a green ravine in the Forest of Dean is Deep Filling Farm – a quiet, private home with a rich and surprising past. Today it’s peaceful, leafy, and serene, but scratch the surface and this spot reveals a tale of cider, road-building, and rural reinvention.
Deep Filling Farm, as it's still called today, sits at the end of a quiet lane just outside Huntley. It began life in the late 1700s as a woodman’s cottage, built when this steep land was more wild forest than anything else. Over time, people settled here, drawn by the clean water of the brook, the fertile orchard slopes, and the nearby coach road between Gloucester and Ross-on-Wye.
.The name "Deep Filling" has origins reaching back to the early 1800s when a major road embankment was built nearby. Engineers filled in a deep ravine to carry the new turnpike road, and the locals called the huge earthworks “the Deep Filling.” The name stuck, and soon the hamlet below took it on. The property itself has had a few identities over the years – Deep Filling Farm, Deep Filling House, Deep Filling Cottage. All the same place, just seen through different lenses as the building changed use. Today it’s officially Deep Filling Farm – and the name proudly continues.
The “farm” in Deep Filling Farm refers to its time as a cider farm – but that wasn’t all. Alongside the cider-making, the site also kept animals. There was a large barn next to the old cider mill that housed sheep, pigs, and chickens. It was a working smallholding, rooted in the rhythm of the seasons, where families raised animals and made their own produce – cider included.
The real turning point came in the late 19th century, with a man named Albert Knight. A bold and industrious local figure, Knight started pressing cider commercially here around the 1880s. With apple orchards covering the slopes and the cold stream keeping the press house cool, it was the perfect place to ferment cider in volume. He turned one of the outbuildings into a cider works – and soon, local farmers were bringing their harvest down Hinders Lane to be milled and pressed.
This wasn’t just a hobby. Knight built himself a fine house up the hill – The Firs – a beautiful home with stunning views over the valley. By the 1920s, the cider works at Deep Filling Farm had grown into a proper little factory. Barrels were filled, bottles were sealed, and Huntley cider was shipped across Gloucestershire. Some people still alive today remember visiting the site at the end of the week – coming down for a few happy drinks and sharing stories with neighbours over a glass of the local brew.
The outbuilding at the heart of it all is now called The Cider Press – a name it officially took in 2024 when it was lovingly restored and opened as a boutique holiday let. But back then, it was the centre of a thriving rural business.
Life at Deep Filling Farm in the 1800s and early 1900s was simple but busy. Men worked in the woods and orchards. Women kept gardens, tended livestock, and made preserves. Children probably walked the mile or so uphill to Huntley school. People fetched water from the brook and heated their homes with logs. And cider wasn’t just a drink – it was part of the economy. Farmhands were sometimes paid in it. Neighbours traded it. And it brought the community together.
But after World War II, the small cider producers began to disappear. Industrial players moved in, and traditional methods fell away. By the late 1960s and early '70s, the orchards around Deep Filling Farm were felled and replaced with larch plantations, part of a broader reforestation effort across the Forest of Dean. The cider works quietened, the barn emptied, and nature moved back in.
Deep Filling Farm remained a home. In 2004, it was extended significantly – transforming the original woodman’s cottage into the elegant private residence it is today. The woodland matured. The brook kept running. And the past lingered gently in the stone.
Then in 2024, the old cider building came full circle. Restored and repurposed, it reopened as The Cider Press – a place where guests can sleep in the same walls where cider once bubbled and barrels rolled. It’s peaceful now, but full of stories.
And that’s the tale of Deep Filling Farm – part woodland retreat, part working memory. A place with roots, character, and a name carved into the landscape – in more ways than one.