The team
Angela Hicken
Madelaine - the book thief
Penny
Rose Ratcliffe
Rachel the editor
Jane the Archivist
Cordelia Gray
Friday Next
Jacky Percival
Other teams
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.

30 September 2009 from Angela Hicken
Finds
- And here is one we missed
- And, finally, one for Hallowe'en
- How did we miss this one?
- John Wyndham's Hampshire connection
- Reading the countryside
- New Milton's new Milton
- Heywood Sumner in South Gorley
- PG Wodehouse in Emsworth
- Walking In My Sleep
- Nicola Slade's Victorian Mysteries
- England's Lost Eden
- June Tate
- Bullington
- Speed The Plough: A Country Song
- A Hampshire scarecrow: Worzel Gummidge
- Queens Arms
- Haslar Hospital Memories
- Magical writing for children
- Inspired by the Tichborne Claimant
- Gypsy Girl Trilogy
- Rev. Gilbert White (1720-1793) and The Natural History of Selborne
- Coffee with Date and Walnut Loaf
- The Play Room
- Kipling's dislikes
- Deadman's Plack
- Netley Abbey Ruins
- Portsea Sagas
- Lilian Harry's Family Connections
- Crossing the Bar
- John Betjeman and Bevis Hillier
- Growing up in Portsmouth
- More Edward Thomas
- Two blokes and a shed
- In the shadow of the Cathedral
- Hampshire Days
- Mr Hardy Writes a Poem
- "Steep" is apt
- Thackeray in Fareham
- Forgotten Favourite?
- Daniel Clay's 'Broken'
- Pell and Tess
- Edward Thomas and Froxfield
- Betjeman explores hidden corners of Hampshire
- Rebecca Smith
- Right of Access
- Hampshire songs, poems, and ditties
- In this house
- Words & Walks
- England, Their England
- An Ode to a Road
- The story of a house
- Crime Connections to the City
- John Keat's Ode to Autumn
- William Lisle Bowles, poet
- Future Princes of Winchester
- Spike Island by Philip Hoare
- The marriage of souls
- Rural Rides: William Cobbett
- Elinor Brent-Dyer remembered
- Dornford Yates' Hampshire connection
- The Marlows, their maker and stealing a corner of Dorset
- Saint Cross: England's Oldest Almshouse
- Winchester the whole day through
- HOW TO BE A BETTER PERSON
- Otterbourne's Enid Blyton? Charlotte M. Yonge (1823-1901)
- Odo's Hanging is missing
- The Warden
- Charles Kingsley's Letters
- Owslebury Bottom
- See it My Way
- Introduction to Melesina Trench
- Some Hampshire road signs read Jane Austen Country
- Flora Thompson: published poet
Recent posts
- Virginia Smith remembered
- Mary Sumner
- A272: An Ode to a Road (by Andy)
- The hunt continues
- Winchester MP Mark Oaten to publish book
- Chalet School
- Bags of Books and Enthusiasm
- Chalet School author
- Poetry in the pub
- Wealth of words in Winchester
- Hampshire Gets Going
Help the team
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