Newstead Abbey repairs planned due to ‘severe health and safety risks’

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Newstead Abbey, pictured front

Newstead Abbey, pictured front

By Joe Locker, Local Democracy Reporter

Urgent repair work is due to take place at the ancestral home of poet Lord Byron as part of efforts to remove it from a heritage ‘at risk’ register.

Nottingham City Council, which runs Newstead Abbey as part of its museums and galleries service, started developing a programme of repairs last year.

The authority is now looking to use just under £250,000 from the National Lottery Heritage Fund to pay for repairs to the Sussex Tower at the abbey.

According to council delegated decision documents the tower has become “a severe health and safety risk” due to water damage, and some rooms below have been emptied of collections and are no longer accessible.

“Newstead Abbey is on the Heritage at Risk Register primarily because of the poor state of its roofs and insufficient rainwater goods causing internal damage from water ingress,” documents say.

In order to carry out urgent repairs to the tower, grant funding has been applied for from the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

“The grant funding will enable a professional team, a conservation-accredited architect, structural engineer, quantity surveyor and scaffolding designer, to lead the project and a main contractor to deliver the repairs.

“The Sussex Tower is a priority area because it contains a redundant and rusty water tank which, due to deteriorated roofs, fills up during downpours and leaks rainwater into the rooms below causing damage to ceilings and walls.”

Newstead Abbey dates back as far as the 12th century, and was home to the poet from 1808 to 1814.

Ken Robinson, who sits on the Newstead Abbey Partnership, a collection of local people who work together to raise money for the upkeep of the site, emphasised the importance of maintaining the abbey due to its local and international importance.

“[The repairs are] a necessity,” Mr Robinson said.

“They abbey was a integral part of Lord Byron’s life, even if for a short period of time.

“Looking at it in terms of the visitor economy, we want people to come to the area. We had some visitors from Greece who all came along for the celebration of 200 years since Byron died.

“They were a party of about 18, and some of them were representatives of the Greek government. We need to maintain it, not just for the people of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and the other shires, but also the international communities.”

In 2021 the council announced it was formally entering into a friendship agreement with a municipality in Attiki, Greece, called Vyronas, which means ‘Byron’ in Greek.

Lord Byron actively supported the Greek struggle for independence from Ottoman rule.

He acted as a fighter for the liberation struggles of the Italians and the Greeks in the early 19th century, and spent significant sums of his personal fortune to assist their causes.

Mr Robinson said areas of the abbey have been “leaking like a colander”, adding: “It is an important part of our history and heritage.”

If the grant money is awarded, the council says the repair programme will begin in April this year.

The water tank will be removed, the roof repaired to its original design, and masonry and internal ceilings will be made safe.

It is expected the work will finish in March 2028.

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