Netley Abbey Ruins Find!

These atmospheric ruins have inspired much writing and imaginative musings, including sightings of ghosts and romantic verse.  The appeal of Gothic ruins was written about by Horace Walpole and poet Thomas Gray.  Both visited Netley in 1755 and Walpole wrote:

"The ruins are vast and retain fragments of beautiful fretted roofs pendent in the air, with all variety of windows wrapped around with ivy - many trees are sprouted up amongst the walls, and only want to be increased with cypresses!...In short, they are not the ruins of Netley, but paradise."

William Sotheby wrote his Ode, 'Netley Abbey, Midnight' in 1790.  A year earlier William Lisle Bowles had written a sonnet commemorating the ruins.

In 1794 William Shield, a well known composer of the day,  staged his 'Netley Abbey - A Comic Opera' at the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden.  A year later Reverend Richard Warner wrote his 'Netley Abbey, a Gothic Story in Two Volumes'.  The site has certainly inspired some sensational literatrue.

netley_abbey6.jpg

 

30 September 2009 from Angela Hicken

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