DAY 3

NEWSTEAD ABBEY

Newstead Abbey is a beautiful historic house with gardens and parkland covering more than 300 acres ( 120 hectares ) a few miles away from Nottingham . Visiting Newstead Abbey , you wander around different kinds of gardens , pass past lakes , ponds and waterfalls … Inside the Abbey, you can visit Victorian rooms and Lord Byron private apartments.

History The priory of St. Mary of Newstead was founded by King Henry II of England about the year 1170 as penances following the murder of Thomas Becket . Contrary to its current name, Newstead was never an abbey: it was a priory.

Sir John Byron of Colwick was granted Newstead Abbey by Henry VIII in1540 after the dissolution of the monasteries and started its conversion into a country house In may 1798, Lord Byron was a young boy of ten when he inherited the estate .The house was in a great state of disrepair ( his great-uncle from whom he inherited had a lot of debts ) but the gothic ruins with the coat of arms of the Byron family were fascinating the young boy. Newstead was his home between 1808 - 1814. Byron had a great love of animals most notably for a Newfoundland dog named Boatswain, who died of rabies in 1808. Byron commissioned an impressive marble funerary monument for Boatswain at Newstead Abbey and the 26 lines poem « Epitaph to a Dog » has become one of his best-known works. In 1818, Lord Byron sold Newstead Abbey to ease his financial troubles . Then , during the next century ,Newstead Abbey had several owners . Since 1931 Newstead Abbey has been publicly owned by Nottingham City Council.

Lord Byron

George Gordon Byron who became Lord Byron the 6th baron Byron( 1788 – 1824) was a poet , a peer and a politician .

Lord byron travelled extensively across Europe and spent most of his life abroad .He took up the cause of several revolutionary movements in Europe and died in Greece leading a campaign in the Greek war of independance . His body was embalmed and sent to England . He is buried at the church of St Mary Magdalene in Hucknall , a town in the suburb of Nottingham . In gratitude , the king of Greece offered the marble slab of his tomb .

Lord Byron is considered one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement and is regarded as one of the greatest English poets . He remains widely read and influential . personal remark :

At Newstead Abbey : from the entrance gate to the carpark , you drive through 1 km long alley of rhododendrons with bright colors in late spring : truly magnificent HARDWICK HALL

Hardwick Hall, 30 miles North of Nottingham is a leading example of the Elizabethan house.Built between 1590 and 1597 for Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in England after Queen Elizabeth,it was designed by the architect Robert Smythson . Hardwick Hall is one of the earliest examples of the English interpretation of the Renaissance style, which came into fashion having slowly spread from Florence. Its arrival in Britain coincided with the period when it was no longer necessary to fortify a domestic dwelling.

This house was conceived to be a conspicuous statement of the wealth and power of Bess of Hardwick . The windows are exceptionally large and numerous at a time when glass was a luxury, leading to the saying : "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall."

The house's design also demonstrated new concepts not only in domestic architecture, but also of a more modern way in which life was led within a great house. Each of the three main storeys has a higher ceiling than the one below, the ceiling height being indicative of the importance of the rooms' occupants: least noble at the bottom and grandest at the top. Hardwick Hall includes one of the largest long galleries in any English house. Hardwick Hall contains a large collection of embroideries ,tapestry and furniture mostly dating from the late 16th century, many of which are listed in the 1601 inventory. Some of the needlework on display in the house incorporates Bess's monogram "ES", and may have been worked on by Bess herself. One piece called « The Sea Dog Table » ( photo below) is an especially important furniture from around 1600, personal remark : When you visit Hardwick hall , you are surprised by the number of tapestries and furnitures . I noticed a certain number of French furnitures in the house ; asking sthe staff about it , the furnitures come from Huguenot families who fled to England to escape persecutions

CHESTERFIELD CROOKED SPIRE

The spire of the church of St Mary and All Saints was added in the 14th-century tower in about 1362 and is 228 feet (69 m) high from the ground .

The spire is both twisted and leaning, twisting 45 degrees and leaning 9 ft 6 in (2.9 m) from its true centre.

The leaning characteristic was initially suspected to be the result of the absence of skilled craftsmen ( all the skilled craftsmen having died off in the Black Plague, only 12 years before, leaving only unskilled laborers to construct the church spire) , insufficient cross frame and the use of unseasoned timber.

The theory now is that the distortion was caused by the 33 tons of lead covering the spire added to the wood shingles some years after initial construction. In common folklore, several local legends hold that the Devil was responsible for it.

The lead covering

Personal remark : when you drive through the town and see the spire , you look twice to be sure ...