Antiques at Newstead Abbey

Newstead Abbey. Image courtesy of http://www.nottshistory.org.uk

In the spring of 1835 FR left the London area to live among her relatives in Nottinghamshire. News of the day was that at nearby Newstead Abbey, a ghost  known as the "black monk" had badly frightened a man-servant. (FR claimed later to have put that ghost to rest, but that's another story.) One other piece of news concerned some antiques.

Newstead Abbey, estate of the poet Lord Byron, at that time in the possession of Colonel Wildman, was founded originally not as an abbey but as a priory of Austin or Black Canons. For the uninitiated, whether an abbey or a priory is a matter of rank. Priories were subsidiaries of abbeys. The head of the priory—the prior or the prioress—was answerable to the abbot or abbess, whereas the head of an abbey—the abbot or abbess—was answerable to the Pope. That is, until Henry the Eighth broke with Rome.

Newstead dated from the 12th century, and so FR found it humorous when Colonel Wildman persuaded Mrs. Rolleston (FR's aunt) to let him have the old grates from Watnall Hall. Watnall Hall was less than 200 years old. How amusing that the old grates were "now among the precious 'antiques' of Newstead."