Bargain Travel
Europe guide to Europe on a budget for vacation destinations, travel
ideas and secret spots missed by travel tours.
NEWSTEAD ABBEY
Lord Byron's Ancestral Home - A Love Affair
Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire is best known as the one time home
of the romantic era poet Lord Byron. The property was originally an Augustinian
Priory of St Mary founded by King Henry II around 1170 as penance for
the murder of Thomas a Beckett, in the heart of the royal hunting forest
of Sherwood, remaining until the monastery was dissolved in 1539 by Henry
VIII, who dissolved and destroyed hundreds of monastic enclaves across
England, leaving only the haunting icons of abbey ruins for posterity
(see Whitby Abbey) and offering the former church lands for sale at bargain
prices. The lands of Newstead Abbey were bought by Sir John Byron, then
the Lord Lieutenant of Nottingham for the total of £810 in 1540.
Lord George Gordon Byron, the 6th Baron of Rochdale, where the property
from which the Byrons' titled derived, loved Newstead Abbey - "Newstead
and I stand or fall together", he wrote in a letter to a friend,
but actually spent relatively little time there, away at college, in
London, then traveling. Newstead Abbey was occupied by Bryon’s
second wife, Annabella, when he was away, but in a clear sign of the
unpleasantness of his marriage, he would arrange for his wife to stay
in another house when he was at home, which added to his debts from the
rising costs of maintenance on the property and his own profligate spending.
Byron swore he would never sell Newstead Abbey, but following his mother’s
death and the pressing scandals of his serial affairs, he left England
for the continent in 1816, never to return. Newstead Abbey was sold to
Thomas Wildman in 1818. Wildman spent a fortune gained from plantations
in the Caribbean to restore Newstead which had fallen into considerable
disrepair under the Byrons. The most famous view of Newstead Abbey is
the remaining west front of the gothic priory dating from the 13th Century,
the residential mansion retains some medieval character but is mostly
19th Century gothic revival, with the Sussex Tower to the main house
added by Wildman.
A
few items of Byron’s legacy remain at Newstead Abbey. In the
Byron Rooms upstairs, the poet’s great ornate bed, which he dismantled
and took with him on his travels, seeming nearly impossible to remove
from the chamber can be found along with the round table on which he
wrote some of his early works and a collection of the Byron family crests.
What is missing? As late as the 1970s one could see a distinctive feature
at Newstead, now gone to memory. The approaching drive to the house was
once lined with great thick oak tree stumps, shorn to nearly ground level.
The trees were cut down and sold off by one Lord Grey de Ruthyn, Henry
Yelverton, who was leasing the property. Bryon returned from Harrow as
a teenager to stay at Newstead when Lord Ruthyn was its occupant, leading
to its perhaps curious tie to the invention of the appearance of the
vampire in English gothic literature. During the famous Gothic Summer
of 1816 in Geneva (see Villa
Diodati and Byron) when a bet was made that
great literary figures like Byron and Percy Shelley should be able to
write gothic horror stories, famously recounted by Mary Shelley in an
introduction of her novel “Frankenstein” (see Mary
Shelley's London). For Byron’s contribution,
he began a story which transformed into the first vampire tale published
in English,
derived
from legends
Byron had heard while traveling in Turkey. Byron abandoned the tale,
having become bored with it and its too personal connection. The fragment
of the story was then taken up by his doctor and traveling companion,
John Polidori who finished it and published “The Vampyre” under
his own name. The lead character of the vampire in Polidori’s version
was named Lord Ruthven, long believed to be modeled on Byron, though
seeming more a pseudonymous dig at Lord Ruthyn, with whom Byron had a
notorious angry break. It has been postulated by some that Byron had
been molested (or a dalliance, depending on your point of view) by Yelverton
as a young man, but another source of resentment which might have turned
Lord Ruthyn into a vampire character is that Ruthyn had all the magnificent
ancient oak trees lining the drive cut down and sold for profit while
he was only renting the place.
Though
the stumps are gone, the beautiful gardens and parkland at Newstead Abbey
cover more than 300 acres, with its lakes, ponds and waterfall cascades
provided by the waters of the Leen River. The Eagle Pond takes
its name
from the former priory's eagle-shaped lectern, which was legendarily
thrown into the lake by the monks to hide it from the looters of the
Abbey and now to be found at Southwell Minster. The Eagle Pond lies at
the heart of the walled Great Garden to the east of the house, where
can be found Byron's famous monument to his favorite dog, a Newfoundland
Hound named Boatswain, who died of rabies in 1808. The monument, inscribed
on marble stained with time, Byron’s “Epitaph to a Dog” is
located where Byron believed to the altar of the priory church stood.
Byron wanted
to be
buried with Boatswain, perhaps his only true lasting love, but his wish
was ignored by his family after his death from "a chill" in Greece, and
he was instead interred in the nearby church at Hucknall.
A
few ghosts are said to roam Newstead Abbey, the son of the first Lord
Byron, called "Little John with the Great Beard", and a former
Prior is said to inhabit the more notorious Haunted Room among the Byron
apartments. A dark robed monk known as the Black Friar wanders the grounds
and the scent of the Rose Lady seems to linger around the staircase.
Events and activities are held at Newstead Abbey during the year. Some
past events have been a Jane Austen Ball and Victorian weekends and ghost
tours are given with the appearance of a rather counterfeit ghost lady
in white. The grounds of Newstead Abbey are open every day through the
year from 9am
to 6pm. The house is only open Fridays to Mondays from April through
September 12 noon to 5 pm. Admission for the grounds and the house is £7
for adults, £3.50 for the grounds only. Newstead Abbey is located
9 miles north of the city of Nottingham. © Bargain
Travel Europe
Compare
the best hotel
and travel deals in Nottingham
Web Info
Newstead Abbey
These articles are copyrighted and the sole property of Bargain Travel Europe and WLPV, LLC. and may not be copied or reprinted without permission.
See Also:
BURGHLEY HOUSE - GREAT ELIZABETHAN MANOR
CRICH
TRAMWAY VILLAGE MATLOCK
MORTIMER'S
HOLE - NOTTINGHAM CASTLE
REAL ROBIN HOOD'S OAK OF SHERWOOD FOREST
Discover Cheap Travel in Europe on a Budget with Bargain Travel Europe ©2006-2012 Winged Lion Entertainment Ventures, LLC
