A picture of Newstead
Matthew Arnold
What made my heart, at Newstead, fullest swell?
'T was not the thought of Byron, of his cry
Stormily sweet, his Titan agony;
It was the sight of that Lord Arundel
Who struck, in heat, the child he loved so well,
And the child's reason flickered, and did die.
Painted (he willed it) in the gallery
They hang; the picture doth the story tell.
Behold the stem, mailed father, staff in hand!
The little fair-haired son, with vacant gaze,
Where no more lights of sense or knowledge are!
Methinks the woe which made that father stand
Baring his dumb remorse to future days
Was woe than Byron's woe more tragic far.
George Gordon, Lord Byron's estate at Newstead Abbey in Nottinghamshire was the home of the Byron family for hundreds of years. It was originally built as a monastery in Sherwood Forest in the 1170s. Newstead then ceased to be an abbey in 1539 during henry VIII's dissolution of the monastaries. In 1540 Newstead Abbey was then granted to "Sir John Byron the Little, with the great beard". Sir John's portrait is still hanging at Newstead.
When Byron's great uncle "Wicked" Lord Byron died, George Gordon Byron (as he was born) inherited the title and the substantial estate as the sixth Baron Byron.
The buildings were grand and the estate opulent, but it decayed substantially during Byron's life. The property was rented out to others through much of Byron's ownership and at other times he tried to sell it. The value and earnings of Newstead Abbey certainly funded much of Byron's travels and his extravangant lifestyle.
Newstead is now publically owned and contains a Byron museum.
