Lacock Abbey

Lacock Abbey, dedicated to St Mary and St Bernard, was founded in 1232 by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, widow of William Longespee, an illegitimate son of Henry II. Ela laid the abbey's first stone in Snail's Meadow, near the village of Lacock on 16 April 1232. The first of the Augustinian nuns were veiled in 1232, and Ela joined the community in 1238. survives unaltered.]] Lacock Abbey prospered throughout the Middle Ages. The rich farmlands which it had received from Ela ensured it a sizeable income from wool. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the mid-16th century, Henry VIII sold the abbey to Sir William Sharington for £783. He demolished the abbey church, using the stone to…

in 1835. Shown here in positive form, this may be the oldest extant photographic negative made in a camera.]] When Sir William Sharington purchased the remains of the Augustinian nunnery in 1540, after the dissolution, he built a country house on the cloister court. He retained the cloisters and the medieval basement largely unaltered and built another storey above, so that the main rooms are on the first floor. The house is constructed of ashlar and rubble stone, the roofs are of stone slates and there are many twisted, sixteenth century chimney stacks. The house is a blend of different styles but lacks a cohesive plan; the four wings of the house are built above the cloister passages, but…

Lacock Abbey is the property of the National Trust, to which it was given in 1944 by Matilda Gilchrist-Clark, who had inherited the estate from her uncle Charles Henry Fox Talbot in 1916. The house, together with the stable yard, is Grade I listed. The Fox Talbot Museum forms part of the ground floor. It celebrates the life of William Henry Fox Talbot, and his contributions to photography, and includes exhibits on the man himself, the chemical processes involved in obtaining images and the early history of photography. Exhibitions showing the works of various photographers are sometimes held in a gallery on the first floor. The Fenton Collection, an historic photographic collection, was…