Lacock Abbey

Lacock Abbey stands in the Wiltshire village of Lacock, a country house built over the remains of a 13th-century Augustinian nunnery. The abbey’s medieval cloisters still lie below the main rooms, which were raised to the first floor by Sir William Sharington after the Dissolution. The house mixes Tudor, Gothic Revival and later styles, with twisted chimneys, stone-slated roofs and mullioned windows. Sharington added an octagonal tower with two small chambers, one for storing treasures and another for banqueting above the roof leads. The stable courtyard to the north preserves 16th-century brewhouse and bakehouse, while the abbey church was demolished in the 16th century and partly rebuilt in the 19th. The abbey is famous as the place where Henry Fox Talbot made what may be the earliest surviving camera negative in 1835. Talbot’s experiments here led to the calotype paper negative process introduced in 1841. The house later passed to the Talbot family and in 1944 was given to the National Trust by Matilda Theresa Talbot. Ela, Countess of Salisbury, founded the nunnery in 1232 and joined the community in 1238. During the English Civil War the house was fortified and garrisoned by Royalists before surrendering to Parliamentarian forces in 1645. Visitors find the main rooms on the first floor reached by broad balustraded steps at the west front. Inside is a full-height hall with octagonal turrets and pierced parapets, and on the south side Sharington’s tower rises three storeys with a belvedere. The basement retains vaulted medieval rooms including the sacristy and chapter house beneath the former dormitory. The stable courtyard north of the house shows Tudor timber gables, a clock tower and mullioned windows, with the 16th-century brewhouse and bakehouse still standing. The abbey church’s north wall was rebuilt in 1828 to include bay windows, while the east front retains a medieval appearance despite later alterations.