Newstead Abbey

No individual entry for Newstead found in the Domesday survey. A 1773 ink-wash-on-paper drawing by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm (1733-1794) of the crypt and its font (?) is held in the British Library Collections [Shelfmark: Additional MS 15544; Item number: f.90]; the crypt is said to date from the 13th century; the font (?) consists of a plain, roughly semispherical basin, raised on a plain cylindrical pedestal base and a square lower base; it is located in the lower crypt, by one of the pillars, near the entranceway. White (1832) notes that the Abbey "was founded as a priory of black canons, about 1170, by Henry II" and reports that "An extensive crypt under the ruined conventual church has been long used as cellars". The British Listed Buildings database entry for this abbey [www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-425355-newstead-abbey-and-adjoining-boundary-wa] [accessed 11 December 2011] dates the crypt to the late 13th century. [NB: we have not been able to find any current information on the whereabouts of this font yet].