Newstead Abbey

More photos that I haven't found time to post - from my May visit 'back home'..... This magnificent old building is a few miles away from the house I grew up in, in Nottinghamshire. Its extensive grounds hold many happy memories for me..... of family days out, as well as youthful and magically romantic walks, hand-in-hand with my 'first love'. (Aww!)

Newstead Abbey started life as an Augustinian priory. In 1540 when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, it was given to Sir John Byron, who converted it to a private house. (An eagle lectern, thought to have been thrown by the monks for safekeeping into the abbey's fishpond, was dredged from the lake in the late 17th century and is now in Southwell Minster.) The house and its estate eventually passed, in 1798, to George Gordon Byron, better known as the Romantic poet Lord Byron.