Lacock Abbey

Tony was at a play rehearsal while Ros and I drove to Lacock Abbey to see the beautiful grounds and the building that was begun 800 years ago.  It was built as a nunnery, later becoming a "quirky" country house and was home to William Henry Fox Talbot, an early pioneer in photography.  A picture taken by him in 1835 of a lattice window in his home is the first photographic negative ever made; the window is still there, apparently unchanged.

On our way, we came across these flowers growing beside the road.  The first is a primrose. The second and third are the same type of flower, just a few feet from one another. The ones fully open are in the sun, while the ones only partially open are still shaded.

Lacock Abbey is adjacent to Lacock Abbey Village, and all of it (abbey and village) belongs now to the National Trust.  The village is very quaint, and is unspoiled by modern improvements except automobiles and paved roads.  It serves as a set for many period TV and movie productions.  Some of the abbey rooms were used for interior scenes of Hogwarts School in the Harry Potter films.

The abbey grounds are impressive, with lots of flowering trees at the time of our visit.  The building has been added on to and updated over the centuries; it's not all medieval.

We entered through the cloister, which is part of the most ancient part of the building.  The arches supporting the roof over the walkway are decorated with "bosses" where the various supporting ribs meet.

The rooms off the cloister have the same sort of ribbed vaulting.  The lower ends of the supporting arches have decorations that look as if they are supporting the arches.  Some of them depict heads of people, and most of these have been defaced beyond recognition.  Presumably this occurred when similar destruction happened at the cathedrals and other churches, during the civil war.  The window is very small, in a very thick wall, but looks out onto a nice view.

This doorway leads to part of the garden.  By the time we had a chance to visit the garden, it was raining heavily and so we did not get to see it.

After the cloister we moved in to a much more recent part of the building.  The kitchen has appliances from the 1920s and 1930s, but shows signs of having been used much earlier (a walled-off arch that was probably an opening for a huge fireplace such as was used for cooking in a large house centuries ago).  Note the candle holders built in to the piano.  The needlework sampler was done by Elenor Cleavland, aged 11, in 1782.

The library is a beautiful, bright room, with a huge bow window.  Down the hall through the door is the window that was the subject of Fox Talbot's first photograph, taken in 1835.

On the way out I captured an image of this flower for sale in the gift shop (as with any museum, the exit is through the gift shop!).

We had seen this swathe of flowers beside the road on the way to Lacock, and stopped in the rain for a few photos on the way home.

A very nice outing, not hampered too much by rain.