Newstead Abbey, Once Home to Lord Byron, Given £103,000 Historic England Grant to Save It for Future Generations

The funding will enable roofing and stonework repairs and support project development work, including feasibility studies that will help to inform future funding bids. 

Historic England has been working in partnership with the Nottingham City Council Museum Service since 2018, providing advice and funding surveys and repairs, including works on masonry for the main building and the cannon fort.  

This is the latest in a series of Historic England grants given to the conservation of Newstead Abbey, now totalling more than £260,000 since 2018.  

The site has been on Historic England's Heritage at Risk register since 2004. 

History

Newstead was originally founded as an Augustinian priory by King Henry II in 1170 as penance for the murder of one of England’s most famous saints - Thomas Beckett. Despite its current name, Newstead was never actually an Abbey but in fact a priory, a similar institution but with less wealth and occupying a lower position in the medieval church hierarchy.  

Surrendered to King Henry VIII in 1539 during his dissolution of the monasteries as part of the reformation, it was granted to Sir John Colwick in 1540 and converted to a country house.  

Newstead was eventually inherited by one of Colwick’s descendants, John Byron, who was a prominent royalist during the English civil wars and became the 1st Baron Byron after fighting for King Charles I at the first battle of Newbury in 1643. 

Newstead Abbey itself was looted by parliamentarian forces during the civil wars whilst John Byron was away besieging Nantwich on behalf of the king.

Lord Byron

In 1798 Newstead became the home of the 6th Baron Byron of Rochdale, George Gordon Byron, aged just 10 years old, now known to us as Lord Byron – widely acknowledged as one of England’s greatest ever poets. 

Lord Byron lived at Newstead between 1808 and 1814, during which time the beautiful natural surroundings provided a source of artistic inspiration, writing "Thro' thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle". In 1817, after he moved to Italy, he sold the house. It had been in the Byron family for nearly three centuries. 

In 1931, the Nottinghamshire philanthropist Sir Julien Cahn gifted Newstead to the Nottingham Corporation. Its successor organisation, Nottingham City Council owns it today, for the benefit of local people and to protect Byron’s legacy.