Lacock Abbey
Lacock Abbey in the village of Lacock, Wiltshire, England, was founded in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, as a nunnery of the Augustinian order. The abbey remained a nunnery until the suppression of Roman Catholic institutions in England in the 16th century; it was then sold to Sir William Sharington who converted the convent into a residence where he and his family lived. It was fortified and remained loyal to the crown during the English Civil War, but surrendered to the Parliamentary forces once Devizes had fallen in 1645.
Lacock Abbey
13th century
16th–-19th centuries
Lacock Abbey with stable yard
20 December 1960
The house was built over the old cloisters and its main rooms are on the first floor. It is a stone house with stone slated roofs, twisted chimney stacks and mullioned windows. Throughout the life of the building, many architectural alterations, additions, and renovations have occurred so that the house is a mish-mash of different periods and styles. The Tudor stable courtyard to the north of the house has retained many of its original features including the brewhouse and bakehouse.
The house later passed into the hands of the Talbot family, and during the 19th century was the residence of William Henry Fox Talbot. In 1835 he made what may be the earliest surviving photographic camera negative, an image of one of the windows.
In 1944 artist Matilda Theresa Talbot gave the house and the surrounding village of Lacock to the National Trust.[1] The abbey houses the Fox Talbot Museum, devoted to the pioneering work of William Talbot in the field of photography. The Trust markets the abbey and village together as "Lacock Abbey, Fox Talbot Museum & Village". The abbey is a Grade I listed building, having been so designated on 20 December 1960.
Today[edit]
Lacock Abbey is now 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.[20] The abbey is a Grade I listed building.[21]
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,[22] his mousetrap camera (so-called by his wife because he scattered the little wooden boxes round the house),[23] 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.[22] The Fenton Collection, an historic photographic collection, was transferred to the museum from the British Film Institute in 2017.[24]