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Lacock Abbey

📍 Wiltshire, England

4.5 ★★★★½ 5,000 reviews

About

Lacock Abbey is a country house in the village of Lacock, Wiltshire, England. There was an abbey of nuns on the site until 1539, and the house is a remodelling and extension of the abbey's cloister court. The Grade I listed building is owned by the National Trust and is notable as the site of Henry Fox Talbot's pioneering work in photography in the 1830s.

Founded in 1232 as an Augustinian nunnery by Ela, Countess of Salisbury. After the Dissolution in 1539, it was converted into a country house by Sir William Sharington. In 1835, William Henry Fox Talbot made the earliest known surviving photographic negative here — a tiny image of the oriel window. The village and abbey have been used as filming locations for Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice. National Trust since 1944.