Lacock, in Wiltshire, is an interesting village. While the National Trust is well known for its historic houses, gardens and landscapes, it is less known as custodians for whole villages. Lacock is an exception, and we combined a visit here with our trip back home from Bath.
The Lacock name comes from Saxon times when settlers lived alongside the Bide Brook which runs through the village. At the time, it is said the brook was called ‘little stream’ or ‘lacuc’.
Lacock has a long history dating back around 800 years. Its foundations (pun intended) lay in its abbey, which was founded in the 1200s by a lady called Ela, who was the Countess of Salisbury. She became Lacock’s first abbess.
Ela was the only child of William FitzPatrick, earl of Salisbury. His father had been an ally of William the Conqueror and had been rewarded for his support with great estates which eventually were inherited by Ela. Her father died when she was young and she became a ward of King Richard I.
In time, she was a lady of significance. Apart from being the holy abbess (for 17 years until her death) and Countess of Salisbury, in 1227 she became the Sheriff of Wiltshire and was responsible for the rule of law as stated in the Magna Carta. Ela secured many rights for the abbey and its surrounding village. She founded two Augustine religious houses: that in Lacock housed nuns, while 16 miles away in Hinton was an abbey for monks.
Ela died in 1261 and the nunnery continued until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539. In 1540 the site was purchased and transformed into a country house. Over the centuries various parts of the abbey were demolished and other parts built, resulting in several styles of architecture including early Renaissance and Gothic Revival.
The property was to changed hands over the years and one resident we all have much to thank. This was William Henry Fox Talbot, who developed the photographic negative process on this very site.
An extensive museum lies next door to the National Trust visitor centre and a whole day could be spent in here alone finding out about photography’s history, its processes and early pioneers, as well as viewing early images. One wonders what he would have thought about the developments of mobile phone technology today.
Visitors can walk all around the abbey – its very survival after 800 years and the Dissolution is extraordinary – and on the upper floor can see the residential areas including the bay window in the South Gallery where Fox Talbot created his first photographic negative. That was in August 1835.
People can also visit the remainder of the estate, which comprises four streets and represents a step back in time. So much so that the site is often used for filming, which has included Cranford, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Robin Hood, Pride and Prejudice, Moll Flanders, and Harry Potter’s The Philosopher’s Stone.
There are a considerable number of rustic houses, three pubs, several shops including the quaint Lacock bakery, and a tithe barn. The latter is pertinent. The nuns reared sheep as a means of income, as did the village’s tenants who paid rent ‘in kind’. This would include the sheep fleeces, which the abbey needed to store before being made into cloth. Cloth manufacturer was an important industry up to the mid-18th century. A tithe barn was built for this storage and still stands today having had several renovations.
The tithe barn is worth visiting to admire its cruck-framed roof and to dwell upon its history. One of the houses in Lacock is available as a holiday rent.
The last owner of the abbey and estate was Matilda Talbot who inherited in 1916. It is said she took her role as landlord seriously and when times were hard sold off some of the abbey contents for the benefit of the tenants. In 1944 she decided to gift the estate to the National Trust and thereby sharing it with the nation for us all to enjoy.
That’s it from our Bath trip, and if all goes to plan we shall be posting again soon.
Copyright: Words and photos, Sue Barnard 2022.