LaCock Abbey and Malmsbury

Saturday, June 22

 

Like most other days the forecast included a good chance of rain but today it actually did rain, although we were fortunate that the downpour came when we were already inside Lacock Abbey[360°].  It was only about ten miles from the cottage and we arrived just before 11:00.  

There are three stories connected to Lacock, it's formation in 1232 as a nunnery by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, being the first.  The second is how it was remodeled after the Dissolution by its new owner, William Sharington, who purchased it from Henry VIII.  The third is as the home of William Henry Fox Talbot, the pioneer of photography who invented the negative around 1835.  Much of the nunnery survives including the cloisters and the modifications made later by the Tudors and Victorians still managed to preserve much of the earlier bits.  The upper floors were very sumptuously decorated and a 20th century heiress of Fox Talbot wrote a book describing her struggle to preserve the estate that she had unexpectedly inherited.  Afterwards we had lunch at the Lacock Abbey cafe, toured the beautiful town of Lacock and saw the photography historical exhibit at the Fox Talbot Museum.  Lacock had been a very good way to spend nearly five hours.

We then drove about 20 minutes to Malmsbury Abbey which had once been a rival in size to Salisbury Cathedral before lightening caused its central spire to collapse and destroy a large section of the church around 1500.  Then the cloister had to be removed as required during the Dissolution a few decades later and doing so weakened the front of the Abbey causing it to collapse.  What remained of the nave became a rather odd looking church that is uniquely beautiful.  The photos below show the outside and inside of the surviving nave where the crossing would ordinarily have begun; the third image probably best illustrates the original abbey with what survived in white.

The town of Malmsbury was very nice to walk through but we only had paid for an hour of parking so we had little time to really explore it.  We grabbed a few items for dinner from our local Sainsbury's, including some gluten free Yorkshire pudding, and watched the remake of “The Manchurian Candidate” starring Denzel Washington.