Netley Abbey - Romantic Ruin

Romantic Ruin

Around 1700, Netley Abbey came into the hands of Sir Berkeley Lucy (also spelled Sir "Bartlet") who decided in 1704 to demolish the by now unfashionable house in order to sell the materials. Sir Berkeley made an agreement with a Southampton builder, Mr Walter Taylor, to take down the former church. However, during the course of the demolition, the contractor was killed by the fall of tracery from the west window of the church and the scheme was halted.

The abbey was subsequently abandoned and allowed to decay. In the 1760s Thomas Dummer, who owned estates in the area, moved the north transept to his estate at Cranbury Park near Winchester where it can be still be seen as a folly in the gardens of the house (at 51°00′08″N 01°21′49″W / 51.00222°N 1.36361°W / 51.00222; -1.36361).

By the second half of the eighteenth century, the abbey, by then partially roofless and overgrown with trees and ivy, had become a famous ruin that attracted the attention of artists, dramatists and poets. In the nineteenth century, Netley became a popular tourist attraction (the novelist Jane Austen was among those who visited) and steps were taken to conserve the ruins. Archaeological excavations directed by Charles Pink and Reverend Edmund Kell took place in 1860. During the same period the owners decided to remove many of the Tudor additions to the building to create a more medieval feel to the site, resulting in the loss of much evidence of the abbey's post-Dissolution story.

In 1922, the abbey was passed into state care by the then owner, Tankerville Chamberlayne, one time M.P. for Southampton. Conservation and archaeological work on the abbey has continued.