Revesby Abbey

Revesby Abbey was founded in the 1140s by William de Roumare, Earl of Lincoln, with its first monks sent from Rievaulx in Yorkshire. De Roumare later became a monk at his own foundation and was buried within it. The house prospered: it held land at Revesby, Scithesby and Thoresby, and in the mid-12th century persuaded its tenants at Stichesby and Thoresby to move elsewhere, emptying both settlements entirely — thirteen families from one, eleven from the other. By 1534 the abbey's income stood at £1,287 2s. 4½d., and it controlled manors from Claxby and Sibsey to Mavis Enderby and Toynton. Yet the money appears to have been badly handled: in 1538 the Duke of Norfolk wrote to Thomas Cromwell that the abbey was "in great ruin and decay". It was dissolved around 1539.

The estate then passed through some of the most prominent hands in England — Charles Brandon, 1st Duke of Suffolk, then William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley, and on through the Earls of Exeter, Berkshire and Suffolk. Craven Howard, who died in 1700, built a new residence on the site, carefully not on top of the monastic remains. In 1711 the house and its 2,000-acre estate were sold for £14,000 to Joseph Banks I, a price described even then as "evidently cheap". Later in the century the grounds were extensively landscaped, and the house became the home of the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, who sailed with Captain Cook.

After Banks died in 1820 the estate passed to his first cousin once removed, the Hon. James Hamilton Stanhope, who died by suicide in 1825, leaving the house to his young son, James Banks Stanhope. For him, William Burn rebuilt Revesby Abbey completely in 1845 in the Jacobethan style; the contents of the older house had been auctioned off in 1843 and its timber and fittings in 1844, though bricks from Craven Howard's house are believed to survive in the sub-basement. The remaining contents were sold in 1953. Permission to demolish was sought in 1977 and initially refused; English Heritage carried out urgent works in 1987, and the house was sold the following year. It appeared on Historic England's 2023 Heritage at Risk Register, where the stable block showed some progress but the main house was recorded as "very bad" and at "serious risk".

Revesby Abbey is a private Grade I listed building in very poor condition and is not a casual visit — there is no wandering in, and the surrounding earthworks and lost abbey site deserve the same restraint. Organised public ghost hunts are held at the venue by event companies, and booking onto one is the usual way to get inside the house after dark.

If you do come, dress for a cold, empty building on a damp Lincolnshire night and keep to the areas your hosts open up; restoration work has made progress on the stable yard, but the main house remains a structure at risk. Go with modest expectations of the ghosts and generous ones for the history, and the night will repay you either way.