A Trip to Lyveden New Bield

Lyveden New Bield is an Elizabethan building project unfinished to this day. Located in East Northamptonshire, it is now a National Trust property.

This grand shell was meant to be a summer house. It has been standing like this, without a roof since 1605, when - on the death of its owner - work was abandoned never to be resumed.

It tells the story of a rich family brought not only to ruin, but to extinction. The building was started by Sir Thomas Tresham, a staunch catholic, openly opposing the then newly created Church of England. The extortionate fines the family had to pay for not attending Anglican Mass were ruinous. Sir Thomas Tresham spent time in prison because of his religious convictions. His son, Francis was involved in the Gunpowder Plot and died in the Tower of London awaiting trial. His spendthrift son, Lewis lost whatever was left of the family's wealth.

I visited the place this summer and I took in the story with very mixed feelings. I would have sympathised a lot more with Sir Thomas' devotion to his faith had I not heard how he made his fortune. It was in the time when sheep was more profitable than having peasants work the land and sir Thomas had no qualms charging extortionate rents and driving the peasants off his land in pursuit of profit.

It was touching to see the never fired bread oven in the never used kitchen in that house that never got to be a home. And I could sympathise with Sir Thomas' homely pursuits – his letters show how he was thinking of his orchard and garden even when a prisoner in the Tower. But there was also the uncomfortably low back door for the servants. Even short people would have had to bend to get through it – what must have been like having to pass through that door tens of times a day, every day of ones working life? And – in the same vein – the back of the house was planned so that the comings and goings of the servants would be hidden from view – an eyesore that could not be tolerated to obtrude into aristocratic eyes.

I would have liked Sir Thomas better if he had cared a tad less about religious symbols and more about the many people working away to put money into his purse and to keep him comfortable in his home. On the way back from Lyveden I found myself thinking that compassion and true kindness have a timeless quality, which our truths - be they religious or scientific - very rarely, if ever, attain.