2-323-928 - www.picturethepast.org.uk/Nottingham City Council /Heritage Images

Colwick Hall, Colwick, Nottinghamshire, c1900s. Colwick Hall stands on a site which has been occupied ever since Saxon times. In the time of the Domesday survey it was held by a certain Waleraum. The first use of the name Colwick as a surname occurs when Reginald de Colwick witnessed a charter on 17 November, 1225. At this time rent seems to have been paid in weapons of war, for in 1280 'Sir Reginald de Colwyck' died (who had lived to be a centenarian). It was declared that he held his lands 'of the fee of Peveril by twelve barbed arrows when he came to Nottingham,' a tradition that continued so late as 1504 the when The Byrons held Colwick 'by the service of twelve crossbows yearly if asked for.' On the death of William de Colwick in 1362, the estate passed by the marriage of his daughter Joan, into the Byron family. The Byrons inhabited Colwick for more than 150 years before they moved to Newstead Abbey. They held it until about 1660, when it came into the possession of the Musters. All the older buildings disappeared when the present Hall was erected in 1775-6, soon after the coming-of-age of John Musters, (father of the husband of Byron's 'Mary.') There is a famous painting by George Stubbs of John and Sophia Musters riding at Colwick, showing the newly built hall in 1777. The house consisted of an elegant centre, crowned with a pediment, resting on four well proportioned Ionic pillars, and joined by two wings of one lofty storey with an entablature, supported by square pilasters, with plain capitols, and lightened much in its effect by a handsome balustraded parapet. It was built in 1776 by Samuel Stretton of Nottingham, from an architectural design of John Carr of York