Lacock Abbey

Lacock Abbey is, surprisingly enough, to be found in the village of Lacock, deep in rural Wiltshire. It is, to be honest, more stately home than abbey, which makes for some variety when you visit. There's also a little museum at the entrance, which isn't covered here but should get a mention in a later blog.

The Abbey was founded by Ela, the Countess of Salisbury, in 1229, as an Augustan nunnery. In 1238 she entered the abbey as a nun herself and went on to become the Abbess in 1240. The Abbey did very well during the middle ages but in the 16th century Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries and he sold it to Sir William Sharington, who turned it into a house, demolishing the abbey church in the process. It has remained as a house since.

Inside the main building, the cloisters and many of the rooms round about it remain as they were in it's days as an abbey. Much of the building, and indeed the village, was used for some of the scenes in the Harry Potter films.

There's certainly plenty of exercise for the neck while walking through the cloisters. I spent most of the time looking up at the ceiling where the bosses make the visit worth while on their own.

They are a mixture of heraldic shields, probably of the abbeys patrons, and the stone masons' whimsy.

Most of them show signs of having been painted at one time or another - it is likely that they were originally. It certainly makes this rather savage dog a lot clearer.

A mermaid (not the only one)

 Not quite sure whether this fellow is the right or wrong way round - you can decide for yourself. Either way, it's a rather cheeky pose to watch the nuns passing below you from.

There are a few masons marks around the cloisters - they're amongst the more complicated ones I've seen. 

This is the chapter house where the business of the abbey would have been conducted. All you film buffs will probably be more familiar with it as the location of the Mirror of Erised in this clip.

Looking from the chapter house out onto the cloisters.

The Sacristy below is where all the church goods would have been kept when not required for a mass. In 1801 it was used to store a fire engine, hoses and bucket. As if this wasn't sacrilegious enough, it is most famous as Snape's potions classroom.

This rather mighty cauldron also makes a Harry Potter appearance (you'll have to look for that one yourself - I couldn't find it). It has the following written round the side of it, "a petro wagheuens in mechlina effusus factus ue fueram anno domini m illesimo ouingentesima deo laus etgloria cristo". It effectively says that it was made by Peter Wagheuens, who was working in Malines (or Mechelen) in Belgium around 1500

It has a great bearded character on the handles.

After the abbey there are a number of rooms to be admired with portraits galore.

The piece of paper on the keyboard says that the piano can be played for the asking. I declined - apparently it is rather out of tune.

The room I took this picture in had the shutters closed making it quite difficult to get a decent picture with my photography skills (or lack of). But I found this particular picture interesting. The frame used to contain portrait of Henry VIII by Holbein  but Matilda Talbot, the last owner of the building before it was passed to the National Trust in 1944, had to sell it to pay for repairs in the village. You'd think an octagonal Holbein of Henry VIII would be easy enough to find on the net but no joy. King Henry was replaced with this portrait of John Ivory Talbot.

What makes it interesting for me is that another painting was carved up to make the portrait and they have the remains of the painting out on display too.

In the corner of the same room, taking advantage of the gloomy atmosphere, this amusing toy from the 1920s or 30s (I guess) projected rotating shadows of dancers on the walls.

John Ivory Talbot, him of the carved up painting, created this great hall in  1754-5. He commissioned Austrian sculptor Victor Alexander Sederbach to make the terracotta figures which decorate the hall. Some of the figures are people connected to the abbey. The lady you see here above the fireplace is the founder of the abbey, Ela. 

Many of the figures seem to be wearing wizards hats. Seems strangely appropriate now.

This one is rather macabre.

I'm not sure this is the RSPCA recommended way to hold a goat.

In 1919 an American student who was staying here thought that it would be a wizard wheeze to put a sugar lump on the goats nose. Matilda Talbot, already mentioned, was rather amused by the whole thing and the sugar lump has remained there since. More correctly, a sugar lump has remained there since - I'm told that it is replaced periodically.

John Ivory Talbot apparently quite liked to entertain at home and stated that he would like to christen his new hall with a "sacrifice to Baccus". I think it is with him in mind that this table of cards has been set up in the hall. I think the night is somewhat advanced for the wig is off and hanging on the back of the chair.

Some heraldic glass in the halls windows.

It looks to me as if it has been made up of some older pieces of other windows.

The hall is the end of the tour and leads back out into the sunshine down this set of stairs.

A rather handsome dog sitting on the roof.

Another chance to have a look at the sphinx that I saw on the way in. It was carved by Benjamin Carter in 1755 and uses 2 surplus chimneys from the building of the hall as the columns.

It is said that on a full moon at midnight the sphinx gets down from her column and goes down to the river to drink.

This chap looks like he needs a cup of tea. Come to think of it, so do I.

Knight time

Since 1759 the Greville family have passed the time of day being the Earls of Warwick. They also seem to have had a bit of a thing for armour, especially George Greville, the 4th earl in the 19th century, who bought a large part of the collection. Apparently it made great fancy dress costumes for parties in the 1950s. Perhaps the family has kept back a few suits of armour to liven up a Friday night, where you can still find the remnants of canapes in the visor hinges or martini stains on breastplates, but I expect that the armour on display in Warwick Castle, which they sold in 1978, represents the best of the collection.

There are two suits of horse armour on display, both from the late 16th century. The one below was designed for jousting and is much heavier than the armour above which was designed for battle. In battle a horse would need to be manoeuvrable where as in jousting it was required mainly to run in a straight line but directly at a chap with a lance. I also noticed that the field armour had a fairly substantial plate for the horses flanks where as there isn't nearly so much on the armour for jousting (you'll have to take my word for that one - the picture showing it is too poor to put up here)

This suit of armour was made by Italian armour maker Pompeo Della Chiesa in the 16th century (the name on his  Wikipedia page is a little different from that on the label. Also the English is a little clumsy, probably because it's a translation. Try the original Italian if you want)

Recent restoration of this armour has found evidence that it may have been gold plated when it was made. Even without the gold, it's a pretty fancy suit covered with engravings and pictures.

This is an example of Maximilian armour . According to the sign this was made in the workshops of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in the 16th century and that the fluting in the armour imitates the fluting in clothing of the day. Wikipedia suggests that the fluting may have added strength and helped deflect blows.

Back in Blighty, here's a suit of armour from the 17th century made in Greenwich in London. It was thought for some time that it belonged to James Graham, 1st Marquess of Montrose who made a habit of doing the kind of business where a suit of armour was a plus. He eventually came to grief, which is always the risk when conducting politics at the head of an army and was hanged and quartered in 1650 (no mention of the drawn bit). His head remained on a spike outside St Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh from 1650 to 1661 when he seems to have fallen back into favour (if a little late) and a funeral was held for him. Recent research has suggest that the armour might actually have belonged to Charles I instead. I don't know how they tell these things but it is certain that he didn't have much luck with his head either.

These pins on the breast plate are designed to rest a lance on. Similar fittings can be seen on several coats of armour in the collection (if you look back, there are fittings for a lance in the same place on both previous suits featured here). This painting of Charles I in a very similar suit of armour to this one (could it be this one?) has similar fittings in the same place. Not that I'd visualised Charles I doing much jousting but I could be wrong.

As mentioned before, most of the armour was bought by the Greville family as part of a collection. This piece was also bought by the family and the only piece here to have seen service by an owner of the castle. It was Robert Greville's, who was a roundhead general in the English Civil war and owned Warwick Castle before the family became Earls of Warwick. The information says that there is a small dent from a musket ball in the armour as proof of it's quality. And although it says that Robert died at the Seige of Lichfield in 1643, it fails to let on that he reputedly has the dubious honour of being the first man killed by a sniper.