Curse
Walter Taylor's dream
He was warned in a dream. The window came down anyway.
See it clearly
- What's there
- Roofless Cistercian abbey church and cloister ruins
- Legend from
- Antiquarian record (Browne Willis, 1718–19)
- Tone
- Chilling
A builder dreams of the falling stone, and pulls the abbey down anyway.
Netley Abbey, a Cistercian monastery founded in 1238, became a Tudor mansion after the Dissolution. In 1704 it was sold for its stone. The builder Walter Taylor, contracted to pull down the church, dreamed that a stone from a window arch fell and killed him. A friend, said to be the father of Isaac Watts, told him to give up the job. He carried on, and tracery from a window fell and fractured his skull, and he died. English Heritage says the death stopped the demolition and saved the ruins. Another legend tells of a monk guarding treasure in a tunnel.