Newstead Abbey, Byron Tea Rooms c.1955

Photo ref: N29015

More about this scene

Newstead was inherited by the 'mad, bad and dangerous to know' poet Lord Byron in 1798 as a virtual ruin, and he sold it in 1817. A previous Lord Byron, the fifth, an ex-Naval man, had a warship in the lake and built mock forts around its edges in the 1770s; this one is the only survivor, and is in fact a conversion of the stables, which were subsequently extended to the right of the view in 1862. No longer tea rooms, they are now private houses partly screened by hedges.