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, and to which she retired in 1238. Her late husband had been William Longespee, an illegitimate son of King Henry II. The abbey was founded in Snail's Meadow, near the village of Lacock. The first of the nuns were veiled in 1232.
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, 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 in 1944. (Wikipedia)
(N.B. This image has been precisely geotagged for your further enjoyment.)
