Lacock Abbey
— — the cloister where photography first held still.
Not only on a wall.
“A 13th-century abbey on the edge of the village of Lacock, in Wiltshire. Ela, Countess of Salisbury, founded it in 1232 as a house of Augustinian canonesses. After the Dissolution the buildings became a country house, and in 1835 William Henry Fox Talbot made the oldest surviving photographic negative on paper, of the oriel window in the south gallery. The cloisters survive almost intact and stood in for Hogwarts corridors in the early Harry Potter films. The National Trust holds the abbey, the village, and the meadow. from the studio
Lacock Abbey, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Lacock Abbey stands at the edge of the village of Lacock in Wiltshire, about 5 kilometres south of Chippenham and 22 kilometres east of Bath. Ela, Countess of Salisbury, founded it in 1232 as a house of Augustinian canonesses on land granted by her late husband William Longespée. It was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539 and sold to William Sharington, who converted the cloister buildings into a Tudor country house. The Talbot family held it from the late 16th century until 1944, when Matilda Talbot gave the abbey, the village, and 113 hectares of land to the National Trust.
The medieval cloister, chapter house, sacristy, and warming room survive substantially intact under the Tudor and 18th-century additions, which is rare among English monastic houses of the period. The vaulted cloister walks are among the best preserved in Britain and were used as Hogwarts corridors in the first two Harry Potter films, alongside scenes from Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Sharington added an octagonal tower in the 1540s; Sanderson Miller added a Gothic Revival great hall in 1754. Much of the village itself is also National Trust land, and the limestone facades date almost entirely to the 18th century or earlier.
The Fox Talbot Museum, in a converted 16th-century barn at the abbey gate, holds prints, negatives, and cameras from the work of William Henry Fox Talbot, who in August 1835 made the oldest surviving photographic negative on paper — a 25-millimetre image of the oriel window in the abbey's south gallery. The abbey, cloisters, and grounds open daily through the main season; the museum operates on the same calendar. The closest railway station is Chippenham, on the London Paddington–Bristol line, with a short bus or taxi onward to the village.