Distance: just under six miles

Difficulty of the terrain: easy

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. file from Dropbox

Gentle walk in central Nottinghamshire from Hucknall Railway Station via the village of Linby to Newstead Abbey the ancestral seat of the romantic poet Lord Byron.

The Story

The Walk

Getting Back

Bryon’s Romantic Abbey

Newstead Abbey, due north of Nottingham near the top of Gedling District, was established in 1170 by King Henry II was part of his penance for ordering the murder of Thomas Becket.

In common with all the other monastic foundations in England it was dissolved and its assets seized for the royal treasury by King Henry VIII in the late 1530s.

Not unusually, but unlike the famous great ruined abbeys at Whitby, Fountains and Rievaulx in North Yorkshire, for instance, Newstead Abbey was transformed into a country estate.

A year after the eclecistaical house’s final dissolution in 1539, Henry VIII granted its lands and former buildings to John Bryon, one of Nottinghamshire’s MPs and a major landowner. John Byron decided to transform the former monastic buildings into a country house, meaning that much of them, including the front facade of the former chapel remain to this day, incorporated into the house.

The name Byron may ring a bell, that is because over time, and through the whims and whiles of national politics, the Byron family was raised from being mere landlords, to becoming part of the aristocracy.

And the Sixth Lord Byron – who ascended to the title via a circumlocution route – thanks to the Fifth Lord having few living male relatives, became a rather famous poet. 

Today we tend to associate Lord Byron with Cambridge, the Mediterranean and in particular Greece, where he is revered as a staunch supporter of their national liberation struggle, and for actions such as his critique of the removal of the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon to the British Museum.

However, having joined the ranks of the peerage aged 10 in 1799, Lord Byron retained links to Nottinghamshire and Newstead Abbey, which despite being in poor repair, he purportedly rather liked, throughout his life. Despite his fondness for Newstead, Lord Byron was freqently short of cash. Like many aristocrats and dandies he had rather more titles than cash. This lead him to try and lease, and later sell Newstead Abbey. He eventually succeeded in this, selling the house to a school friend Thomas Wildman who had lots of money (from selling sugar produced by the labour of enslaved people) but no great titles.

Evidence of Lord Byron’s ties to Nottinghamshire were evident in 1812, as one of the youngest members of the House of Lords, he was one of the few national figures to speak up in support of the “Luddite” frame knitting machine breakers, who had risen up in Nottinghamshire and elsewhere in the North, and Northern Midlands, and been sentenced to death. His critique was grounded in romanticism and radicalism in equal measure. 

As well as the connection to Newstead Abbey Lord Byron also had ties to Southwell – the cathedral town roughly due east of Newstead – where he lived with his mother from time-to-time during his adolescence and early adulthood. Upon his death aged 36 in 1824 Lord Byron’s body was embalmed (minus his heart which apparently was buried in Greece) and shipped back to the UK where it was buried in the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Hucknall. His daughter Ada Lovelace, a mathematician and proto-computer programmer was also buried there upon her death in 1852.

Over the course of the next three or four generations Newstead Abbey passed through the hands of numerous owners. Its last private owner Julien Cahn who ran a Nottingham based furniture showroom and mail order catalogue business, gifted it to Nottingham City Council in 1931. Despite Newstead Abbey lying a fair distance outside the Nottingham City Council area they continue to run it and its grounds as a museum and public amenity to this day.

The Walk

Get the route: via Ordnance Survey Maps or download the GPX. files from Dropbox

I create the Walk Midlands routes via Ordnance Survey Maps Explorer enabling me to take them on my phone. Subscribe yourself via the banner above.

This walk to Newstead Abbey begins from Hucknall Railway Station.

Upon alighting from a train at Hucknall’s single platform station (also the terminus of a tramway running up from central Nottingham) use the steps at the northern end of the platform to exit onto a raised road.

Once on the road turn right.

Then head left and follow the road for a short distance as it curves around a corner.

Presently just after a row of terraced houses there is a snicket on the left.

Head down this snicket for some distance.

On the right you come to an exit which leads out onto an estate of 1970s vintage houses.

Walk down a footpath on the right past the front doors of two terraced rows of houses (clearly constructed on the Radburn Principles).

At the bottom of the footpath you come to a cul-de-sac, follow it a short way past more of the 1970s era houses.

You approach a grassy area. Here there is a footpath leading off to the left.

A little way along it and you turn to the right.

Follow this path for some distance passing an estate of newish houses and a couple of mid-20th Century primary schools.

Presently it leads out onto a road which you follow a little way until you come to a junction.

Here, turn right and walk for a short distance.

On the other side of the road there is a path leading off into a small park.

Cross and head down this path, it soon curves to the right.

Walk along this path for some distance.

After a while you come to a main road, which you cross.

Continue walking along the path on the other side.

A bit further on and you see an unpaved, but well trodden footpath running off to the right.

Turn down this footpath.

Soon the footpath leads onto a paved footpath off to the right, which turns into a driveway a little further along.

You pass the premises of the Linby Colliery Welfare Football Club, before reaching a road.

At the road turn left.

Follow the road for some distance, passing a church, until you come out opposite the sandstone medieval cross in the centre of the village of Linby.

Linby is an attractive and affluent seeming village. The area where Newstead Abbey is situated is incredibly varied, split between former coal mining communities, and quite rural seeming areas.

Upon reaching the main road through Linby turn right.

Follow the road through the centre of the village and out towards open countryside.

Near the edge of the village, on the opposite side of the road, there is a gateway leading onto a very well worn footpath across the fields.

Cross over the road, head through this gate and begin walking across the fields.

Presently you enter some woodland and cross the River Leen. The Leen looks tranquil today, but according to Andreas Malm in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries it was amongst the most heavily exploited for turning industrial water wheels in the whole of the UK.

On the other side of the Leen and the woodland keep walking straight ahead.

Soon, next to a churchyard, you reach a wooden gate leading out onto a lane.

Once on the lane turn right.

This soon leads down to the centre of the village of Papplewick.

Here, turn left and walk along the pavement of the main road running through the village.

This soon leads out into attractive, gently hilly, and quite wooded (this is Sherwood Forest country) countryside.

Presently you approach the hamlet of Top Farm.

Here there is a junction with a track running off past the farm.

Turn left and head towards this track.

Walk through a gate past the farmyard and several large houses.

Soon you reach the edge of the hamlet and a gate leading off the paved lane onto a gravel track running across fields.

Head down this track and keep walking along it for quite some distance. It is very flat and easy going, lined with trees and hedges.

At the bottom of the track you encounter two gates. One for cars, one for people.

Head through the unlocked gate for people to the left.

On the far side there is a footpath leading into woodland. Head down this path.

Soon it reconverges with a road running into woodland.

Continue on the road for quite some distance as it runs through the woodland surrounding the Abbey.

Presently you come to a junction with a larger road.

Here, turn left and begin walking along the road. It soon runs past the main car parks for the Abbey buildings.

Soon below you appears the Abbey lake, and the main Abbey building to your left.

Having spent some time at the Abbey and seen its famous peacocks, continue along the road at the front of the Abbey.

Walking along this driveway takes you to the village of Newstead which has a railway station.

Keep walking along the driveway for a fair distance.

Presently you pass a gatehouse, cross a car park, and pass underneath a former railway bridge which now carries a cycle greenway.

Shortly after crossing the bridge the road swings around to the right.

Here you can see Newstead Railway Station – close but out of reach behind a fence – on your left, and the site of the former Newstead Colliery (closed in 1987) to your right.

At the top of the road, near the entrance to the former colliery stands a pit wheel emblazoned with the dates of operation (1874-1987) and a micropub in a modern building (not unlike a Little Chef) which may have been a late addition to the colliery, or it may have been built afterwards, called “The Pit”.

Upon reaching this point turn left and across the railway via a level crossing heading into the village of Newstead. There is a large and sprawling miners welfare building just ahead of you.

To reach the station, turn left again just after the level crossing and walk a short distance towards its single platform.

Getting Back

Newstead Railway Station is served throughout the day by hourly trains running north towards Worksop and south towards Nottingham. Southbound trains also call at Hucknall which has a connection to the Nottingham tram network and extensive bus connections.