Newstead Abbey is best known as the seat of the Romantic poet George Gordon, Lord Byron, but it was equally famed in the middle of the 18th century as the home of his great-uncle, William, the 5th Baron, known as the ‘Wicked Lord’. It was William who built sham forts and castles around the estate’s Great Lake, on which sailed his fleet of boats.

William (1722-1798) became notorious when he killed a man in a duel in 1765, and after his death countless stories were told of the Wicked Lord’s licentiousness, his feckless approach to money, and his murderous tendencies – many of the tales were wildly exaggerated, but whatever his vices he had the virtue of knowing how to erect a good gothic folly.

The sham castle on a hill above the lake was built in 1749, the date being inscribed above the door, although no records of a designer seem to survive. The Battery on the shore of the lake below the Castle must have been constructed around the same date, as it is shown in an engraving published in October 1749.

The Castle, as it is named on the earliest Ordnance Survey map of 1838, was built as a belvedere, from whence ‘the views of the lakes, the abbey and its fine arch, the plantation and the park […] form a very noble landscape’. It was also a banqueting house, and in the basement were servants quarters for the preparation of food. The upper storey was an ‘Octagon Gothic Room’ with a coved ceiling. This space was fashionably fitted out with a polychromatic Gothic fire surround, a sofa, blue and gold ‘Chinese’ chairs, and statues including Venus and Flora. No doubt great parties were held there, although little contemporary evidence can be found. But such is the Wicked Lord’s reputation that Emily Brand, in her recent book on the Byron family, surmises that ‘beyond that great oak door William and his dishonourable friends supposedly sank into depravity and staged drink-fuelled orgies’.

Below the Castle was a rampart with gateways at each end on which 4 guns were mounted, and at the foot of the slope was the Battery, ‘a small Fortification with about Twenty Cannon’ and a flagpole with boathouse alongside. Once the Castle and Battery were complete William ordered a number of boats, and in September 1753 a friend of the family noted in her diary that ‘ye ships came today to Newstead’. As well as craft described simply as yachts and boats, there was a rather more impressive gunship equipped with 20 cannon. This vessel fired a gun salute which was returned from the fort and battery. The accounts for 1755 show that a sailor and an assistant were paid to maintain the fleet and crew the ships. It has been assumed, with the arsenal of cannon on the boat and at the forts, that mock naval battles (naumachia) were enacted at Newstead, and whilst that seems likely, no first-hand accounts of such antics have been found.

By 1759 William had already embellished a mill across the lake from the Battery with turrets and battlements. In that same year it was reported that he was planning to add kennels and stables in a similar style. In 1767 a visitor noted that the building was known as ‘Moro Castle’, suggesting that it was complete by 1762, the year the British stormed the Moro Castle in the Siege of Havana during the Seven Years War. But this is the sole mention of it by that name, and it was better known as the Fort.

All of this investment, as well as William’s extravagant lifestyle in general, led to financial difficulties, and he had to sell off wood to pay his debts. In 1760 Horace Walpole wrote to his friend George Montagu to say that Lord Byron had ‘lost large sums, and paid part in old oaks, five thousand pounds worth of which have been cut near the house’.

Walpole may have exaggerated a little for dramatic effect, as other visitors in the 1760s admired the ‘fine park’, and the ‘fine oaks’. The trees in the immediate vicinity of the Castle were certainly reprieved, as in 1768 a visitor admired the ‘large plantation’ each side of the folly. These woods are shown in an engraving of 1780 after a painting by Paul Sandby, above, and in the anonymous watercolour taken from the same viewpoint.

The Castle survived into the 20th century, being used for a time as a schoolroom, but it was demolished in 1921, with only traces now visible above ground.

The Battery (listed grade II* as ‘the Cannon Fort’) and the Fort (grade II) can still be seen: the former was restored a few years ago and can be visited, and the latter, the abbey’s tea-room in the middle of the 20th century, can be admired from across the lake.

Newstead Abbey was bought by the philanthropist Sir Julien Cahn and presented to the City of Nottingham in 1931. The fort and stables were later sold and converted to private housing but the abbey and park have continued as a popular tourist destination ever since. Read more https://newsteadabbey.org.uk

For more on Naumachia see the essay by Michael Cousins (who is thanked for his help with this post) and Patrick Eyres in the New Arcadian Journal https://www.newarcadianpress.co.uk/product/naumachia/

For more on Newstead see the excellent Newstead Abbey: a Nottinghamshire Country House: its Owners and Architectural History 1540-1931, by Rosalys Coope & Pete Smith.    http://www.thorotonsociety.org.uk/publications/recordseries/newsteadabbey.htm

In the mid-19th century, the inhabitants of the rapidly-expanding town of Nottingham could spend their leisure hours at the Radford Grove Tavern and Tea Gardens. Here they could row on the lake, attend dances, and admire the view from the roof of a very pretty ‘Octagonal Pleasure House’.

The ‘delightful place of public resort’ started life as the gardens of William Elliott (1707-1792), a successful dyer and hosier, who created the small estate as a suburban retreat towards the end of the 18th century. By 1783 the Villa’s grounds were admired for their ability to ‘induce the smile and create admiration’. In 1790 the Nottinghamshire historian Throsby called Elliott’s grounds a ‘little paradise’ where ‘almost everything you could wish to see in extensive pleasure grounds, you see here in miniature’. Throsby noted the water, planting and temples before concluding that ‘this place must be delectable to the owner’.

Sometime after Elliott’s death in 1792 the pleasure grounds were opened to the public as a commercial undertaking, and the name Radford Folly became attached to the summerhouse and also the whole attraction. Radford was a village about a mile out of Nottingham, so the pleasure grounds were easily accessible to the townsfolk. The earliest known view is in The Stranger’s Guide through the Town of Nottingham (above), published in 1827. The engraving shows the lake and summerhouse, and the recently rebuilt church of St Peter to the left. The smoke from the factories, from whence workers flocked to the gardens to relax, can also be seen. (These working-class revellers were dismissed rather haughtily by a writer in 1836: he commented that their ‘dances are supported with spirit, at least, if not with gentility and grace’.)

The summerhouse stood on an island in the lake, which was accessed via an ‘elegant Chinese bridge’ From the ‘observatory’ that topped the summerhouse there were extensive views of the town and surrounding countryside, including the magnificent mansion and park at Wollaton, the seat of Lord Middleton. Engravings of the gardens were in circulation, and a view of the folly and bridge featured on items of chinaware.

Refreshments were served in the gardens (although strictly no beer or spirits on a Sunday), and visitors could relax in the beautiful gardens where there were ‘numerous bowers and seats’. Cashing in on the changing seasons, the proprietors, of which there were a number over the years, opened the gardens for ice-skating in winter when conditions allowed.

The gardens were at their most popular from around 1820-1870 (although the house did return to being a private residence for a period), when attractions included a firework display by Mr Gyngell from the ‘Royal Gardens, Vauxhall, patronised by the King’. In 1839 there was ‘ANOTHER GRAND TREAT’ with transparencies (painted sheets illuminated from behind) showing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and fireworks, which display was ‘on a scale of UNPRECEDENTED MAGNIFICENCE’.

In 1863 John Poole took over the gardens and hired the famous funambulist Blondin, who crossed the lake on a high wire. Actors, musicians and magicians performed in the gardens and there were further illuminated tableaux, but Poole couldn’t make ends meet and he was adjudicated bankrupt in May 1865. And that seems to have been the end of the pleasure gardens.

In 1928 local historian J. Holland Walker wrote that it was ‘hard to believe that the dirty and derelict brick building standing amidst dreary surroundings […] was once a popular pleasure resort’. The lake had been filled in, and the surrounding area was gradually developed for industrial use, but the dilapidated  summerhouse held out until the 1950s when the last remnants were demolished. Houses now stand on its site.

N.B. early OS maps show the summerhouse standing in the grounds of The Grove, but just north-east is something marked the ‘Folly’. The identity of this building remains a mystery.

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