ruin his son’s inheritance, while creditors forced the sale of paintings by the likes of Titian and Rubens; there were auctions in 1772 and 1778, and at his death, parts of the roof weremissing. However, due to the untimely death of both son and grandson, it was young George Gordon Byron who inherited the despoiled, costly ruin that Newstead had become. Decades earlier, HoraceWalpole had exclaimed on
visiting: “Newstead is the very abbey”. Its visual impact, the soaringWestWindow bereft of traceries, the substantial cloisters, the Great Hall (extant – now the Salon) with itsmagnificent ceiling, are an imposing, unforgettable sight. Itmust have had some impact on his thoughts about Strawberry Hill.
G
iven Byron’sminority, after eightmonths living with elderly female relatives in Griddlesmouth Gate in Nottingham,Mrs Byron found a new house to rent for 35
guineas a year in Southwell, near Nottingham: BurgageManor. Newstead was to be rented out until Byron came of age, in a bid to improve the depleted fortunes and rents of the estate.Of several tenants, Lord Grey de Ruthyn (whomay have been Byron’s lover), inhabited it longest, for five years at just £50 a year from1803; but during this time very little remedial work was done to the fabric of the habitable parts, although 15-year-old Byron bunked off school and spent a winter with the shooting-mad 23-year-old Lord there, until the steward complained that the pair were potting roosting pheasants. Returning fromHarrow, and later Cambridge, the
adolescent andmoody Byron found BurgageManor stifling, which is easy to imagine in comparison with Newstead. He wrote to his half-sister Augusta in 1805 of his “hopes of being emancipated fromthe slavery of BurgageManor”. Such comments should be taken with a poetic pinch of salt, given the restless and grandiloquent predisposition of their teenage author, comparing a comfortably furnished, warm and carpetedmaternal home with the wild – and independent – grandeur of his impending residence.
Byron’s friend across Southwell Green, Elizabeth Pigot, shows its charmat the time; whatOliver Bradbury calls “an unpretentious sub-Palladian villa; a standard Midland variant for its date”. It has been substantially enlarged backwards, in what Bradbury describes as “several building campaigns”. It is of note that during Byron’s time at Trinity
College, Cambridge, where he took up residence on 24October 1805, age 17, Byron spent vast amounts doing up what he called his “Superexcellent rooms”. His allowance of £500 per year was soon gone; an exorbitant £75 on a joiner, which, as well as bookshelves, built his extravagant, coroneted bed that is still at Newstead. By the end of the first term he was a further £1,000 in debt, an astounding sum. Acquiring a coach and a bearmay not have helped. In 1808, Lord Byron took up semi-residence at
Newstead. It should be noted that he rarely lived there for extended periods of time, roaming between London and, rarely, Burgage Manor. His renovations to Newstead were, though visually dramatic, superficial,mainly concentrated on his own comfortable Empire-style rooms in the North-West wing (adjoining theWest Front and principally medieval); and rooms for guests at the furthest remove, in the South-East wing. The roofs and structure were left in such a parlous state that within a decademost of Byron’s decorations had been largely destroyed by water. Given that by 1809 his debts were £12,000, thismodest alteration programme was understandable.
Stone and stanzas: Byron’s frenetic life touched on a series of old buildings, most of which survive. From top, the remains of Gight Castle in Aberdeenshire, which was once part of Byron’s inheritance. He tried to buy it, just before his death; Burgage Manor, near Southwell, Nottinghamshire. Teenage Byron found it stifling; Trinity College and its fountain, where Byron bathed naked, shocking the Fellows
Since the deeds to Burgage aremissing, it is
uncertain whether it was built in 1780-90 or, as its owner Geoffrey Bond believes, in 1701-2. A shallow, three-bay house with large sash windows and a side entrance, it had 25 acres and stabling. A drawing by
UNABLE to raise amortgage on Newstead as he had intended, Byron began trying to sell the estate in earnest in 1812 for, on returning fromtravels abroad in 1811, too late to be with hismother as she died there, he found bailiffs installed. One visitor,WilliamHarness, pungently
described a three-week visit that year as being “domiciled in the wing of an extensive ruin”. During periods of residence, Byron shot in the Great Hall, fenced in the Great Dining Roomand
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