College withdraws plans to sell historic carvings

Published on Monday 23 November 2009 08:39

PLANS by a college to sell off ancient stone carvings believed to be 2,500 years old to help fund repairs and upgrades costing nearly £6 million have been withdrawn.

Bosses at Newbattle Abbey College Trust had applied to Midlothian Council for permission to remove the carvings of Assyrian kings from the A-listed Newbattle Abbey.

The college intended to sell the Assyrian reliefs in a bid to raise the money needed for the urgent upgrades and replace the original carvings with replicas. But the application for the removal of the panels from a crypt has now been withdrawn.

Newbattle Abbey had argued that selling the reliefs was "essential" for securing the cash needed. The college needs to find 900,000 for repairs deemed urgent, more than 3.6m for "necessary" works and the remaining 1.4m for "desirable" repairs.

Assyrian reliefs are the art of the ancient civilisations that grew up in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, now in Iraq.