Lacock Abbey
Encyclopedia
Lacock Abbey in the village of Lacock
Lacock
Lacock is a village in Wiltshire, England, 3 miles from the town of Chippenham. The village is owned almost in its entirety by the National Trust, and attracts many visitors by virtue of its unspoiled appearance.-History:...

, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...

, England, was founded in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury
Ela, Countess of Salisbury
Ela of Salisbury, 3rd Countess of Salisbury was a wealthy English heiress and the suo jure Countess of Salisbury, having succeeded to the title in 1196 upon the death of her father, William FitzPatrick, 2nd Earl of Salisbury...

, as a nunnery of the Augustinian order.

History

Lacock Abbey, dedicated to St Mary and St Bernard, was founded in 1229 by the widowed Lady Ela the Countess of Salisbury, who laid the abbey's first stone 16 April 1232, in the reign of King Henry III
Henry III of England
Henry III was the son and successor of John as King of England, reigning for 56 years from 1216 until his death. His contemporaries knew him as Henry of Winchester. He was the first child king in England since the reign of Æthelred the Unready...

, and to which she retired in 1238. Her late husband had been William Longespee
William de Longespee, 3rd Earl of Salisbury
William Longespée, jure uxoris 3rd Earl of Salisbury was an English noble, primarily remembered for his command of the English forces at the Battle of Damme and for remaining loyal to King John.-Early life:...

, an illegitimate son of King Henry II
Henry II of England
Henry II ruled as King of England , Count of Anjou, Count of Maine, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Duke of Gascony, Count of Nantes, Lord of Ireland and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland and western France. Henry, the great-grandson of William the Conqueror, was the...

. The abbey was founded in Snail's Meadow, near the village of Lacock. The first of the nuns were veiled in 1232.

Generally, Lacock Abbey prospered throughout the Middle Ages
Middle Ages
The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. The rich farmlands which it had received from Ela ensured it a sizeable income from wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....

.

Following the Dissolution of the Monasteries
Dissolution of the Monasteries
The Dissolution of the Monasteries, sometimes referred to as the Suppression of the Monasteries, was the set of administrative and legal processes between 1536 and 1541 by which Henry VIII disbanded monasteries, priories, convents and friaries in England, Wales and Ireland; appropriated their...

 in the mid-16th century, Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...

 sold it to Sir William Sharington
William Sharington
Sir William Sharington was an English courtier of the time of Henry VIII, master and embezzler of the Bristol Mint, member of parliament, conspirator, and High Sheriff of Wiltshire.-Early life:...

, who converted it into a house starting in 1539, demolishing the abbey church. Few other alterations were made to the monastic buildings themselves: the cloister
Cloister
A cloister is a rectangular open space surrounded by covered walks or open galleries, with open arcades on the inner side, running along the walls of buildings and forming a quadrangle or garth...

s, for example, still stand below the living accommodation. About 1550 Sir William added an octagonal tower containing two small chambers, one above the other; the lower one was reached through the main rooms, and was for storing and viewing his treasures; the upper one, for banqueting, only accessible by a walk across the leads of the roof. In each is a central octagonal stone table carved with up-to-date Renaissance ornament. A mid-16th century stone conduit house stands over the spring from which water was conducted to the house. Further additions were made over the centuries, and the house now has various grand reception rooms.

In the 16th and early 17th centuries, Nicholas Cooper has pointed out, bedchambers were often named for individuals who customarily inhabited them when staying at a house. At Lacock, as elsewhere, they were named for individuals "whose recognition in this way advertised the family's affinities": the best chamber was "the duke's chamber", probably signifying John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland
John Dudley, 1st Duke of Northumberland, KG was an English general, admiral, and politician, who led the government of the young King Edward VI from 1550 until 1553, and unsuccessfully tried to install Lady Jane Grey on the English throne after the King's death...

, whom Sharington had served, while "Lady Thynne's chamber", identified it with the wife of Sir John Thynne
John Thynne
Sir John Thynne was the steward to Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset and a member of parliament. He was the builder of Longleat House and his descendants became Marquesses of Bath.-Early life:...

 of Longleat
Longleat
Longleat is an English stately home, currently the seat of the Marquesses of Bath, adjacent to the village of Horningsham and near the towns of Warminster in Wiltshire and Frome in Somerset. It is noted for its Elizabethan country house, maze, landscaped parkland and safari park. The house is set...

, and "Mr Mildmay's chamber" was reserved for Sharington's son-in-law Anthony Mildmay
Anthony Mildmay
Sir Anthony Mildmay was a country gentleman from Northamptonshire, England, who served as Member of Parliament for Wiltshire from 1584 to 1586 and as English ambassador in Paris in 1597.-Early life:...

 of Apethorpe
Apethorpe
Apethorpe is a village and civil parish in East Northamptonshire district of the shire county of Northamptonshire, England. The 2001 census records a population of 133....

 in Northamptonshire.

The Abbey also underwent alterations in the 1750s under the ownership of John Ivory Talbot in the Gothick Revival
Gothic Revival architecture
The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

 style. The architect was Sanderson Miller
Sanderson Miller
Sanderson Miller was a pioneer of Gothic revival architecture, and a landscape designer who often added follies or other Picturesque garden buildings and features to the grounds of an estate....

.

The house eventually passed to the Talbot family. It is most often associated with William Henry Fox Talbot. In 1835 Talbot made the earliest known surviving example of a photographic negative
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

, a photogenic print of the oriel window in the south gallery of the Abbey. Talbot continued with his experiments at the Abbey and in 1840, discovered the negative/positive photographic process, upon which modern photography is based.

The Abbey houses the Fox Talbot Museum devoted to Talbot's pioneering work in photography and the original photograph of the oriel window he developed.

Lacock Abbey and the surrounding village were given to the National Trust
National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty
The National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, usually known as the National Trust, is a conservation organisation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland...

 in 1944. The Trust market the abbey and village together as Lacock Abbey, Fox Talbot Museum & Village.

The Abbey in film

Some interior sequences in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (film)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is a 2002 fantasy film directed by Chris Columbus and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the second instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman...

were filmed at Lacock, including the cloister walk (illustrated, left) where Harry
Harry Potter (character)
Harry James Potter is the title character and main protagonist of J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. The majority of the books' plot covers seven years in the life of the orphan Potter who, on his eleventh birthday, learns he is a wizard...

 freed Dobby. During four days in October 2007 Lacock was also used to film some scenes for the sixth Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (film)
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is a 2009 fantasy film directed by David Yates and based on the novel of the same name by J. K. Rowling. It is the sixth instalment in the Harry Potter film series, written by Steve Kloves and produced by David Heyman and David Barron...

. Warner. Bros. announced that the spooky nights of Hogwarts were also filmed here with most of the main characters including Daniel Radcliffe

The Abbey was one of two major locations for the 2008 film version of the historical novel The Other Boleyn Girl
The Other Boleyn Girl
The Other Boleyn Girl is a historical fiction novel written by British author Philippa Gregory, loosely based on the life of 16th-century aristocrat Mary Boleyn. Reviews were mixed; some said it was a brilliantly claustrophobic look at palace life in Tudor England, while others have consistently...

.

Lacock appears in the "Robin Hood and the Sorcerer", "Cromm Cruac" and "The Pretender" episodes of Robin of Sherwood
Robin of Sherwood
Robin of Sherwood , was a British television series, based on the legend of Robin Hood. Created by Richard Carpenter, it was produced by HTV in association with Goldcrest, and ran from 1984 to 1986 on the ITV network. In America it was retitled Robin Hood and shown on the premium cable TV channel...

. It was also used in the 1995 BBC/A&E production of "Pride and Prejudice".


External links

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