Page 22 - Oundle Life July 2021

prison to think again. It was during this period of incarceration that he first imagined, and subsequently described in meticulously-detailed letters, his designs for his deeply symbolic summer house and gardens at Lyveden which were constructed in his absence.
If Tresham’s mission to build
Lyveden in the shape of a Greek cross
was a celebration of his Catholic faith,
then history recording Lyveden as
‘never finished’ could be written-up as
a win for the English Protestant Church
in its suppression of Catholicism.
Could Lyveden’s reputation for being unfinished be little more than historical propaganda? – the message being ‘Tresham failed!’ Who knows?
We can be sure of one thing though; it was a lot more finished than some accounts suggest. Walk around Lyveden and you can clearly
see joist holes, scaffolding holes, and slots for internal rainwater pipes, along with remnants of timber joists slowly rotting away in their pockets.
It is reported by Historic England that the staircase was removed in C17 by Colonel Butler
to Cobthorne, in Oundle. To have a staircase installed is to have floors worth reaching. And the former was probably not installed before the roof went on. Furthermore, the manuscripts compiled by the antiquary John Bridges for his
History of Northampton-shire in the early 1720s state that Boteler plundered Lyveden New Bield for timber that he had ‘sawed out of the walls’. Again, suggesting that the building was far more complete in c.1655 – some 50+ years after Tresham’s death.
Upon his death Sir Thomas’ coffers were empty, leaving his widow with colossal debts which she largely repaid without legal obligation during the 10-years that followed. Could the Tresham family have reported their building as unfinished to avoid some of the accumulated debt? We know that the gardens were largely complete as documented in letters, and we may rightly assume that the New Bield was practically complete – even if not as Tresham had intended.
It is inconceivable that timbers and a staircase
Was Lyveden New Bield really never finished?
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