The Lost Houses of Lincolnshire - Bayons Manor

• 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.
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  • 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.

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    Keeping the tenants happy

    This 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.

    
    
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    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.

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    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,

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    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.

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