Newstead Abbey

Newstead Abbey
General information
Coordinates	53°04′42″N 1°11′33″W / 53.078333°N 1.1925°W / 53.078333; -1.1925
Construction started	ca 1170
Design and construction
Owner	Nottingham City Council
Designations	Grade I listed building

Newstead Abbey, in Nottinghamshire, England, originally an Augustinian priory, is now best known as the ancestral home of Lord Byron.

Monastic foundation

The priory of St. Mary of Newstead, a house of Augustinian Canons, was founded by King Henry II of England about the year 1170, as one of many penances he paid following the murder of Thomas Becket.

The Valor Ecclesiasticus of 1534 gave the clear annual value of this priory as £167 16s. 11½d (£70,000 as of 2011),^[1]. The considerable deductions included 20s. given to the poor on Maundy Thursday in commemoration of Henry II, the founder, and a portion of food and drink similar to that of a canon given to some poor person every day, valued at 60s. a year.

Despite the clear annual value of Newstead being below the £200 assigned as the limit for the suppression of the lesser monasteries, this priory obtained the doubtful privilege of exemption, on payment to the Crown of the heavy fine of £233 6s. 8d in 1537.

The surrender of the house was accomplished on 21 July 1539. The signatures attached were those of John Blake, prior, Richard Kychun, sub-prior, John Bredon, cellarer, and nine other canons, Robert Sisson, John Derfelde, William Dotton, William Bathley, Christopher Motheram, Geoffrey Acryth, Richard Hardwyke, Henry Tingker, and Leonard Alynson.

The prior obtained a pension of £26 13s. 4d. (£10,000 as of 2011),^[1], the sub-prior £6, and the rest of the ten canons who signed the surrender sums varying from £5 6s. 8d. to £3 6s. 8d.

The lake was dredged in the late eighteenth century and the lectern, thrown into the Abbey fishpond by the monks to save it during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, was discovered. In 1805 it was given to Southwell Minster by Archdeacon Kaye where it still resides.

Priors of Newstead

Eustace, 1216 Richard, 1216 Robert, 1234 William (late cellarer), 1241 William, 1267 John de Lexinton, resigned 1288 Richard de Hallam, 1288

Richard de Grange, 1293 William de Thurgarton, 1324 Hugh de Colingham, 1349 William de Colingham, resigned 1356 John de Wylesthorp, resigned 1366 William de Allerton, 1366 John de Hucknall, 1406

William Bakewell, 1417 Thomas Carleton, resigned 1424 Robert Cutwolfe, resigned 1424 William Misterton, 1455 John Durham, 1461 Thomas Gunthorp, 1467 William Sandale, 1504 John Blake, 1526

The early Barons Byron

Newstead Abbey in 1880.

Newstead Abbey 2007

Many additions were made to the original building. The 13th century ecclesiastical buildings are largely ruined during the dissolution of the monasteries. Early in the 18th century, the 4th Lord Byron landscaped the gardens extensively, to which William Byron, 5th Baron Byron added Gothic follies. It became a stately and glamorous estate. William Byron, known as "the Wicked Lord", was eccentric and violent and ruined the estate. Lord Byron's son and heir (also named William) eloped with Juliana Byron, the daughter of William's brother John Byron. Lord Byron felt that intermarrying would produce children plagued with madness and strongly opposed the union. He also needed his son to marry well in order to escape the debt that had been incurred in the Byron name. When defied by his son, he became enraged and committed himself to ruining his inheritance so that, in the event of his death, his son would receive nothing but debt and worthless property. He laid waste to Newstead Abbey, allowing the house to fall into disrepair, cutting down the great stands of timber surrounding it, and killing over 2,000 deer on the estate.

His vicious plan, however, was thwarted when his son died in 1776. William also outlived his grandson, a young man who, at the age of twenty-two, was killed by cannon fire in 1794 while fighting in Corsica. The title and Newstead Abbey was then left to his great-nephew, George Gordon, who became the 6th Baron Byron when the 5th Lord died on 21 May 1798, at the age of seventy-nine. Upon his death, it is said that the great number of crickets he kept at Newstead left the estate in swarms.

Lord Byron

The young Lord Byron soon arrived at Newstead and was greatly impressed by the estate. The scale of the estate contributed to Byron's extravagant taste and sense of his own importance. However, no less impressive was the scale of problems at Newstead, where the yearly income had fallen to just £800 and many repairs were needed. He and his mother soon moved to Nottingham and neither lived permanently at Newstead for any extended period. His view of the decayed Newstead became one of the romantic ruin, a metaphor for his family's fall:

Thro' thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle;
Thou, the hall of my fathers, art gone to decay.

The estate was leased to the 23-year-old Henry Edward Yelverton, 19th Baron Grey de Ruthyn, from January 1803. The lease was for £50 a year for the Abbey and Park for five years, until Byron came of age. Byron stayed for some time in 1803 with Lord Grey, before they fell out badly.

In 1808, Lord Grey left at the end of his lease and Byron returned to live at Newstead and began extensive and expensive renovations. His works were mainly decorative, however, rather than structural, so that rain and damp obscured his changes within just a few years.

Byron had a beloved Newfoundland dog named Boatswain, who died of rabies in 1808. Boatswain was buried at Newstead Abbey and has a monument larger than his master's. The inscription, from Byron's poem Epitaph to a Dog, has become one of his best-known works:

The poem Epitaph to a Dog as inscribed on Boatswain's monument

Near this Spot Are deposited the Remains of one Who possessed Beauty Without Vanity, Strength without Insolence, Courage without Ferosity, And all the Virtues of Man without his Vices. This Praise, which would be unmeaning flattery If inscribed over Human Ashes, Is but a just tribute to the Memory of "Boatswain," a Dog Who was born at Newfoundland, May, 1803, And died at Newstead Abbey
Nov. 18, 1808.

Byron had wanted to be buried with Boatswain, although he would ultimately be buried in the family vault at the nearby church in Hucknall.

He was determined to stay at Newstead—"Newstead and I stand or fall together"—and he hoped to raise a mortgage on the property, but his advisor John Hanson urged a sale. This would be a preoccupation for many years and was certainly not resolved when Byron left for his Mediterranean travels in 1809. Upon his return to England in 1811, Byron stayed in London, not returning to see his mother who had been living in Newstead. She died, leaving him distraught at his own negligence of her. He lived again at the Abbey for a time but was soon drawn to life in London.

For the next few years, Byron made several attempts to sell the Abbey. It was put up at auction in 1812 but failed to reach a satisfactory price. A buyer was found, however, who offered £140,000, which was accepted. By spring 1813, though, the buyer, Thomas Claughton, had only paid £5,000 of the agreed down-payment. Byron was in debt and had continued to spend money on the expectation that the house would be sold. Negotiations began to degenerate and Byron accused Claughton of robbing the wine cellar. By August 1814, it was clear that the sale had fallen through, and Claughton forfeited what he had paid of the deposit. Byron was now without settled financial means and proposed marriage to the heiress Anne Isabella Milbanke. Claughton did return with new proposals involving a reduced price and further delays. Byron turned him down.

Later owners

Colonel Thomas Wildman

Newstead Abbey (1975)

In July 1815, Newstead was once again put up for auction but failed to reach its reserve, bought in at 95,000 guineas. It was only during Byron's exile in Italy, in 1818, that a buyer was found.^[2] Thomas Wildman, who had been at Harrow School with Byron and was heir to Jamaican plantations, paid £94,500, easing Byron's financial troubles considerably.

Wildman too spent a great deal of money on the Abbey and its contents, restoring it to some greatness. The architect John Shaw Sr. designed new parts of the abbey for Wildman [1].

William Frederick Webb

In 1861, William Frederick Webb, African explorer, bought the Abbey from Wildman's widow. Under Webb, the chapel was redecorated, but the rest of the house remained largely unaltered. After his death in 1899, the estate passed to each of his surviving children and finally to his grandson Charles Ian Fraser. Fraser sold Newstead to local philanthropist, Sir Julien Cahn, who presented it to Nottingham Corporation in 1931.

Today

The Abbey is now publicly owned, by Nottingham City Council, and houses a museum containing Byron memorabilia.

• Newstead Abbey Homepage
• Shaw Hardwick family of architects
• Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey by Washington Irving, from Project Gutenberg
• Details from listed building database (425355) . Images of England. English Heritage.
• Photographs of Newstead Abbey from Nottingham21
• More information, photos & slides on Rise Park Nottingham site

References

1. ^ ^{a b} UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Lawrence H. Officer (2010) "What Were the UK Earnings and Prices Then?" MeasuringWorth.
2. ^ Gladwyn, Derek (1992). Leigh Park a 19th Century Pleasure Ground. Middleton press. p. 29. ISBN 1873793073.