Why is the manor called "Bayons"?
At the Conquest the manor became the property of the William the Conqueror’s half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, it was then named Bayeux Manor later corrupted to Bayons, it became the baronial inheritance of the family of De Bayeux till the reign of Edward II., subsequent owners were Beaumont, and then, by inheritance, into the hands of Francis Lovell, 1st Viscount Lovell and d'Eyncourt, who forfeited it, with his other vast possessions to Henry VII, due to his involvement in the battle of Stoke, 1487. This powerful nobleman avoided capture, he was said to have lived for years afterwards in a cave or vault. The only person who knew of his presence was a faithful servant who locked him into the secret room at Minster Lovell Hall and brought him his food. According to legend, the servant died unexpectedly, leaving Lovell to starve to death. In 1718 a vault was said to have been discovered, containing the skeleton of a man in rich attire, with a cap, book, paper, pens, etc sitting at a table with a skeleton dog at his feet.
Bayons Manor came into the possession of the Crown, and was granted by Henry VIII to Sir Henry Norris, who was later decapitated for his friendship with Queen Anne Boleyn following her fall from grace with Henry VIII. Bayons was again forfeited, but afterwards, by grant and repurchase, came back to, and continued the property of, the descendants of William, second son of, Alice, Baroness D’Eyncourt, and male heir of the Lord Lovell and D’Eyncourt.
George Clayton Tennyson, Alfred's grandfather, descended from a long line of south Yorkshire yeoman farmers and professional men, who moved to Lincolnshire in the eighteenth century. George’s father, Michael, was a surgeon in Market Rasen, and married, Elizabeth Clayton, whose family owned much of Grimsby. The Claytons were co-heirs of the Earls of Scarsdale and descendants of the medieval family of d’Eyncourt. George became the most successful solicitor in Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. The profits of his business, combined with shrewd purchase of farm land at slump prices, made him a rich man.
At the end of the eighteenth century he bought Tealby Lodge, and built a property around it. The original bay-fronted Regency building was the size of a thatched cottage, but it was in a beautiful position on the west slope of the Wolds, and there were traces of a medieval castle about 100 yards from the house. He enlarged the existing buildings, planted trees and formed a park. It was about this time that Tealby Lodge was renamed Bayons Manor.
George died in 1835, his eldest son was also George Clayton Tennyson, Alfred’s father, George senior had decided his eldest son was unfit to succeed him. He disinherited him, supplied him with a family living at Somersby and properties in the growing town of Grimsby, and concentrated his energies and money on his second son, Charles. George, the son, predeceased his father by 4 years.
Charles was left Bayons Manor and the bulk of his father's property, plus an allowance of £7,000 a year. Almost immediately Charles added d’Eyncourt to his name; they were ancestors of Elizabeth Clayton, his grandmother.
Charles was Tory MP for Grimsby from 1816 to 1822, he remained MP at other constituencies until 1852. Charles married Francis Mary Hutton at All Saints Church, Gainsborough in 1808.
Between 1818 and 1825 he had been busily engaged in advising and helping his brother-in-law, the millionaire Durham coal owner Matthew Russell, in the task of resurrecting one of the most magnificent modern castles in England from the scant ruins of medieval Brancepeth Castle. With this experience behind him and with considerably increased antiquarian knowledge, he embarked on a similar task at Bayons.
Lincoln architect W A Nicholson was employed to design Bayons Manor, but most of the design was down to Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt; when he was in London weekly, sometimes daily, writing letters with changes including drawings and plans. Nicholson was noted for designing fairly boring buildings but with the aid of Charles produced an extravagant neo-Gothic manor.
Charles employed a small army of workmen, several from Italy.
In 1836 the foundations of the Great Hall were laid, and a little later the Library wing was built to the north. The hall faced south. The two neo-Tudor Regency bays remained. In the centre of the north front, the massive tower was built. The date is about 1839. At this stage Bayons was still only a medium-sized manor house. Then the mood changed and the works began to get theatric. Inner and outer defensive walls were erected, a moat dug, and an embattled barbican with a mock drawbridge provided. Bayons Manor was almost finished but the design was thought to be incomplete, a tower was suggested as the necessary central point, a flag was hoisted at the site of the intended tower, to give idea of its effect, it was approved and the tower was built. Later the house was surrounded by fake fortifications. The manor comprised of 60 rooms, twelve battlemented towers, a keep, a moat, and a great hall that would seat 150 guests. It was completed by 1842. Among the fine fittings and furniture installed in the Great Hall were heavy bronze chandeliers that previously hung in the Palace of Westminster, and were removed after the fire of 1834 and statues of two English kings (one being Edward the Confessor), the statues were returned to the Palace of Westminster when Bayons was abandoned. There was also a dining table made for Burghley House too big for there, but not for the Great Hall. The main framework of the interior was Gothic, with open timber roofs and elaborate Gothic chimneypieces in the hall and others of the main rooms. Crace & Sons of London installed painted decorations and wallpapers by Pugin. Armour, weapons, heraldry and stained glass abounded. But there were also busts of Napoleon and Byron, classical tapestries, Etruscan vases, and pictures by Van der Neer and Guardi. The literary equivalents of Bayons are the novels of Walter Scott and still more of Charles d’Eyncourt’s friend Bulwer-Lytton, who wrote Harold the Last of the Saxon Kings (1848) during a stay there. Charles was himself a bad poet. He considered his nephew’s poetry ‘horrid rubbish’ and was disgusted when he was made Poet Laureate.
Keeping the tenants happyThis lithograph shows the tenants being entertained in the hall of Bayons Manor in 1842. The formula was found to work remarkably well; with the squire and his tenant farmers in the hall, the rest of the gentry in the dining room and the labourers in a marquee in the park, the Victorian countryside sailed out of agrarian discontent into the calm waters of mid-Victorian deference.
Bayons Manor in 1887 Mrs Charlotte Ruth Tennyson d'Eyncourt was the last resident of Bayons Manor, she had lived there for 40 years, in 1944 she moved into the Garden Cottage in the park. She claimed in an interview that Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt built Bayons Manor because his brother in law, Matthew Russell, spent £80,000 a year on his Co. Durham castle.
Mock Drawbridge and Barbican Gatehouse Bayons wasn't only a romantic interpretation of a medieval manor house; it was also a demonstration of the social status of the recently wealthy Tennyson family.
There is a story related by members of the family that Charles in old age was being driven in a carriage through park looking back at Bayons Manor and saying "I must have been mad."
Charles Tennyson-d'Eyncourt died 21 July 1861, one day after his 77th birthday. Charles' eldest son, George Hildyard Tennyson D'Eyncourt, inherited Bayons Manor, he died 23 March 1871 and was succeeded by his brother Admiral Edwin C Tennyson d'Eyncourt CB RN. Edwin C Tennyson-d'Eyncourt died 14 Jan 1903, he was succeeded by his nephew Edmund Charles Tennyson-d'Eyncourt, The last lord of the manor of Tealby.There was a fundamental flaw in the construction of Bayons Manor, the local stone that was used in the main structure had deteriorated but the cappings were of Portland Stone which is much heavier and was crushing the local stone. The cost of rectifying this flaw was estimated at £90,000 in the 1960s, about £1.7 million today (Bank of England figures).- Bayons Manor was taken over by the army in the Second World War.
- The Tennyson-d'Eyncourts sold the manor house and park to local farmer, Reginald W Drakes in January 1944
In 1956 trees were growing out of curtain walls, the adjacent buildings had collapsed in a jumble of timbers, and the whole looked ready to return to nature. It was truly the enchanted palace of the Sleeping Beauty, ‘a fairy-tale invention’ wrote Mark Girouard. I wandered through room after room, Pugin papers fluttering off the walls, the hammerbeamed Great Hall a wreck, panelling ripped off and splintered, wonderful carved stone Puginesque chimney-pieces defaced. Geoffrey Houghton Brown’s antique dealer from Grantham had carted off a load of Gothic furniture some years before. Upstairs, birds fluttered and cawed at my presence. I thought then, and later wrote: ‘Bayons is now in total decay, and never looked better.’ In 1959 the situation had changed little since my first visit, the decay simply more picturesque,
Aerial view of Bayons Manor c.1960 The Bayons Manor Estate was sold to E A Sheardown Ltd of Marston, Lincolnshire for £162,000 in 1964. The manor house had been subject to theft of lead, wood panelling, and damage since the Second World War. The Manor had become a white elephant, World War One had changed peoples views of employment, women found they could do other jobs apart from domestic service, and the new ambitions brought higher wages. Sixty rooms took a great deal of work, cleaning, lighting and maintaining fires in rooms. Add to that the cost of maintaining the buildings and it's obvious impossible to keep going.
The Ministry of Housing and Local Government in 1964 suggested to the Lindsey County Council that the buildings be left as a "Monumental Ruin", the cost of clearing rubble and making the buildings was deemed too expensive.
The demolition of Bayons Manor began in September 1964, The main tower which housed the principal drawing room and staterooms above was blown up. In October the remaining parts of the building and walls were blown up.
Over 100 more posts @ https://itsaboutlincoln.blogspot.com/p/index-to-blogposts.html
The Lost Houses of Lincolnshire - Bayons Manor
The Lincolnshire Pub the RAF Destroyed
|
Heading north on the A46 from Newark it is almost impossible to believe there once was a public house a short distance south of the roundabout at Halfway Houses.
The pub began life at Halfway House Farm. In 1856 the pub moved south to its final location. It and the nearby Red Lion were well placed to serve and accommodate the weary traveller being almost exactly midway between Newark and Lincoln.
During the Lincoln Handicap it was usually granted an alcohol licence extension so the late night travelling punters could celebrate their wins and losers could get some consolation in an alcoholic drink.
Auctions and inquests were also held at the pub.
Its end came with the building of RAF Swinderby, one of the last stations completed under the RAF's expansion plans begun in the 1930s. The pub was demolished in 1940 to make was for a dispersal point. As a result, the tenants moved to the newly constructed Fosse Way public house on the A46 near Thorpe on the Hill, where they remained until their retirement in 1956.
1912 Ordnance Survey Map overlaid with Bing aerial view © National Library of Scotland |
Google Streetview of the location of the Sir Isaac Newton public house. Too dangerous to stop to take a photo. |
List of Licensees of the Sir Isaac Newton public House
1855 Richard Glazier
1860,1861 William Bottomley
May 1870 Robert Merry becomes licensee
1872 Robert Croft
Dec 1874 W Smith becomes licensee
1896 George Makin, 1st March 1893 he was prosecuted for selling adulterated brandy.
1905 William Henry White
1909/1913 Richard Bones
1919 Mary Ann Bones
27 February 1920 the S.I.N sold by auction for £1,550. With 10 acres of Land to Mr Antill of Cleethorpe. Was he acting as agent for James Hole?
1924 licencee W D Antill
Mar 1934 Application for extension for Lincoln Handicap, licencee A J Gardner
Arthur Gardner was licensee of the Sir Isaac Newton and became licensee of The Fosse Way from 1940, he retired in 1956 after 43 years with James Hole's brewery.
Lincoln Companies - Lincoln Gas, Light and Coke Co.
History
Other Suppliers
It wasn't viable for the company to lay pipes outside of Lincoln, companies like Porter & Co of Lincoln, supplied complete gas plants to large country houses and some villages so that gas could be produced locally. Hartsholme Hall had its own gas plant, probably supplied by Porters.
Bracebridge Gasworks
The owners of the gasworks had tried for several years to sell it. In 1885 agreement was made with Lincoln Corporation to buy the gasworks.
1885 Statistics
163,000,000 cubic feet produced
5,789 consumers
Main 35 miles long
The Cost of Gas in 1913 was 2/- (10p) per 1,000 cubic feet
Helping the War Effort
During the First World War a by-product recovery plant was installed to extract Toluol and Benzol for the high-explosive industries
Showroom
First showroom opened in 1919, later moving to Silver Street.
1933 Statistics
Wages £25,996, 102 miles of mains, 17,796 consumers, 1,884 street lamps, 12,242 gas cookers, 33,257 tons of coal carbonised, 14,014 gallons of oil used, 21,617 coke made, 412,275 gallons of tar, 324 tons of sulphate of ammonia, 560,000,000 cubic feet of gas produced an increase of about 25% over the previous 10 years
A New Gasholder
The rapid increase in consumers during the previous 40 years meant that the maximum storage for gas was only enough for 12 hours consumption.
Various types of gasholder were inspected and in 1930 a new holder of the three-lift spiral guided type was ordered to increase storage capacity. The capacity of the new holder was 1,500,000 cubic feet.
The End of Coal Gas
Natural Gas was found in 1910 in Germany, in the mid-1950s BP discovered natural gas fiels in several places in the UK, a field was discover near Gainsborough in the late 1950s. It wasn't until the 1970s that drilling for natural gas in the North Sea became economically viable due to the 1973 oil crisis. Since that time coal gas production has ceased in the UK.
Banks and High Bridge
Byards Leap - A Lincolnshire Legend
"On the old Roman road, called ' Ermine Street,' or ' The High Dyke,' . . . —and at a distance of some three miles from Ancaster, a Roman station . . . —and in the angle formed by the Sleaford and Newark road, which there crosses the Roman road — stands a solitary farm-house; its solitude only relieved by two cottages distant about one hundred yards, on the same side of the great highway, and, more recently erected, a small school building on its opposite side.
"Not less singular are the circumstances which are said to have given rise to the name "of ' Byard's (or ' Bayard's ') Leap,' or the Leap of the horse ' Bayard.' ... It [the Leap] is situated in the midst of what was once a lonely tract of high land, almost a waste, extending for many miles, and called Ancaster Heath. . . . The pedestrian who follows the footpath which runs along the Eastern side of the great Roman highway will observe, at a distance of some fifty yards northwards from the farmhouse of Byard's Leap, and near a pond by the roadside, four very large iron horseshoes, embedded in the soil. If he measures the distance of these shoes from the pond he will find that it is twenty paces or sixty feet, and sixty feet was the length of Byard's Leap. . . . Opposite the farm of ' Bayard's Leap ' is a plantation . . . consisting chiefly of trees of recent growth; but probably there formerly existed an older growth, whose pristine shades were more adapted to harbour weird spirits. Within that wood, inhabiting, as it is said, a cave, but more likely a deserted quarry of the famed Ancaster stone of the district (such places of abode being still used), there lived the pest and terror of the countryside in the person of an old woman, known far and wide as, par excellence, the witch ... a dangerous character was the old beldame to anyone who ventured to thwart her or cross her path. ...
An alternative tale |
"He mounts the horse Bayard. He calls out to the old woman, asking her to come and ride behind him. Her reply (which has been preserved) is, ' Wait till I've buckled my shoes and suckled the cubs, and I'll be with you.' He waits, and in due time she comes forth. At his bidding, she mounts behind him. He at once plunges his knife into her breast. The old hag, in her agony, clutches at the horse's back with the long sharp nails of her fingers. The horse in alarm makes one wild, sudden bound, which lands him full sixty feet from the spot. The witch falls back into the pond and is drowned, so her career is ended.
"Tradition says that the horse made a second bound, equal in length to the first, and which brought him to the corner of the cottages which stand further on by the side of the road ; but only the first is marked by the four huge horse-shoes, which are carefully preserved, in situ, as described above, as standing evidence and memorial of ' Bayard's Leap.' . . . It should here be stated that considerable variations from the foregoing version of the legend exist, as is usually the case with such narratives, in the form of oral tradition still floating in the neighbourhood. For instance, the personality of the hero himself varies from that of a knight-errant of the age of chivalry to that of an ordinary cavalry soldier of a more recent period. . ."
"The Legend of Byard's Leap" - Rev J Conway Walter
(Bayard is Old English meaning horse)
Map showing the re-alignment of the A17
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland