Newstead Abbey A Nottinghamshire Country House: Its Owners and Architectural History 1540-1931 by Rosalys Coope and Pete Smith

Description

This volume gathers together in a single chronological narrative a series of articles on different phases of the Abbey’s architectural history written over a period of 35 years by architectural historian Dr Rosalys Coope and published in the Transactions of the Thoroton Society.  Included are full transcripts of the extensive household inventories of fittings and furnishings of 1740 and 1778 as well as a description of the contribution of the 5th Lord Byron who lavished so much money on ‘Gothicking’ the house and park that he virtually bankrupted the estate by the 1770s, earning him the perhaps undeserved epithet of the ‘Wicked Lord’. However, much of the Abbey’s fabric which we see today is due not to the Byrons but to the Wildmans and Webbs family between 1817 and 1925.

The book is lavishly illustrated with 112 plates and diagrams, most in full colour.