Wiltshire 2013-2014

Two historic sites in the southwest of England.

Wiltshire is filled with a great many prehistoric sites, historical towns and country houses. However, most will know it for the famous Stonehenge. This gallery will not cover Stonehenge, simply because it has become an attraction so popular that it is more like a visit to see a car park and large crowd, instead of a visit to a historic site. And you can't normally even get close to it either. Since we had a guest with us, and very limited time, that would not have been a productive way to spend it. Another day, perhaps.

• The first site is the village of Lacock (pronounced "lay cock", which somehow makes it sound even worse), and most especially Lacock Abbey. It was founded in 1229 by a widow (Lady Ela, Countess of Salisbury), so that she could continue to own property without having to be married. She remained as a nominal mother superior, though realistically, she only wanted to avoid losing her wealth.
• Abbey gate.
• The side which has been repeatedly rebuilt and restyled, with older walls still visible outside the building, and a turret which doesn't really fit.
• Oddly placed buttress on the far side.
• The cloister walkway has been used as a film set on many occasions, most famously as part of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter film series, such as the Chamber of Secrets and the Half-Blood Prince.
• A revisit while empty.
• There is even a spy-hole for the Abbess to look out from her hidden stairway, so she could secretly watch the other nuns in the Abbey.
• The vaulted rooms were also used as classrooms in various Harry Potter films, including the Philosophers Stone. This one was Snape's potions classroom.
• Chambers. Fans of Harry Potter may remember the Mirror of Erised being in here, as well as McGonagall's classroom.
• Coffins.
• This hollowed stone box is thought to have been used as an aquarium, for temporarily keeping the wild-caught fish that would traditionally be served on Fridays.
• The warming room with its 500 year old cauldron. This was the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom in the first Harry Potter film.
• A little magic and everyone disappears.
• Drain to take waste out of the abbey.
• The cloister courtyard is also shown at various points in the Harry Potter films, with a fountain. If you're not a fan, please try to look at the architecture instead.
• Cloister.
• Just the courtyard with the tree in blossom.
• Seen from above.
• The Brito, a dictionary of religious words, about as old as the abbey itself.
• Some 700 years old.
• The wine cellar, with a couple of bottles.
• Tiny gas(?) cooker.
• Old rocking horse.
• Organ room. This upper floor was converted into living quarters in 1539, after King Henry VIII dissolved its status as a monastery, and sold it to the Sharington family. It was acquired and modified further some 200 years later by the Talbot family (this is not just a random name; more on them later).
• Presumably a projector, with a chimney to let the light's heat escape.
• Stuffed pangolin, the only scaled mammal.
• Party room, right?
• South Gallery, with its very old grand piano, which we were allowed to play, for the entertainment of other guests.
• Not just a window. This is The Latticed Window, the subject of the World's oldest known photographic negative and positive, dating from August 1835.
• Given the sensitivity of the originals, these are only copies; the picture on your screen being a copy of the image on my camera's memory, itself a copy of the positive which is a copy of the original positive which was a copy of the original negative. A copy is therefore perhaps appropriate. The calotype (negative+positive) process developed by William Henry Fox Talbot, used to take this picture, changed the World of photography. Sadly, he patented and licensed his process too heavily, causing people to use the alternative (and beautiful) Daguerreotype process, which could only make a single positive image, without being able to make copies. The collodion process and its derivatives, which advanced past the calotype paper negatives to using transparent negatives, became the main way to produce photographs, right up until the proliferation of low-cost digital photography about 160 years later.
• A copy of the Mousetrap camera used to take the picture. These were developed by William Henry Fox Talbot, to be portable, to be taken on trips to Wales (his relatives were the landowners in the Port Talbot and Margam area), so that he could take images back to show people, as he did not consider himself good enough as an artist to be able to paint the scenes he saw.
• The grand hall.
• One of the many sculptures adorning its walls.
• A very old stained glass window. It's nice to see such an old example that doesn't depict religious iconography - any such windows would have been removed when the abbey was dissolved.
• Reflection lake built especially for paintings and photographs like this. The mature trees were also positioned carefully, moved around with giant machines, to make sure that they did not block the views.
• Blossom and barn in the private part of the gardens (we were given special access).
• Clock on the roof of the brew house.
• Sculptures in the brew house.
• Boiler in the brew house, where the mashed ingredients (malted barley and water, plus dried hops as a preservative - this was a beer house rather than an ale house) were boiled.
• Cooling pan and fermenting vessel. The beer was then decanted into barrels placed under the tap, in a recess in the floor. This process (without the hops) had been used on a small scale for centuries by housewives (not by men) to make ale that was safer to drink than water, but this very early Tudor (1539) brew house is on an industrial scale, serving the whole mansion, and would have been work for men.
• Accommodation for the staff.
• Camouflaged bark in the gardens.
• Some of William Henry Fox Talbot's original mousetraps, in the abbey museum.
• Several other camera designs representing the innovations or stereotypes of their era.
• Lacock itself contains many more historic buildings. Most of the village is significantly over 200 years old, and some, such as the tithe barns at the end of the High Street, are nearly 700 years old. The entire village is preserved in this state, and as a result is used in many films. Perhaps most famously, the High Street here was used in the BBC's 1995 Pride and Prejudice - yes, the one seemingly beloved by virtually all British women, and painfully endured by any male counterparts.
• Tithe barn, some 700 years old.
• Gateway in the abbey grounds, begging to be photographed.
• Village church.
• Church Street.
• At the end of Church Street lie some private dwellings, one of which served as the home of Harry Potter's parents, when their deaths were mentioned in the Philosophers Stone (later films used a completely different building design).
• In the same courtyard is the current pottery, and old threshing barn - it has open sides instead of windows, to allow the wind to blow through it, which separates the heavy wheat from the lighter chaff when they are thrown into the air.
• Tudor porch.
• Perhaps the most unique thing in Lacock; this contraption lies in The George Inn, a wheel which turned a roasting spit in front of the fire by means of a pulley. The wheel was driven by a special breed of miniature dog, the Turnspit. Either that or an army of hamsters.
• Black cat (not McGonagall, sadly) glowing in the evening light.
• This topiary can speak for itself.
• Even the cars are old fashioned. But even though it looks old, this Morgan +8 is actually only from 1990, and is in fact a very powerful sports car, in disguise.
• Stonehenge may be the most famous, and perhaps the most dramatically preserved, but the largest stone circle in Europe is Avebury. It's so large that it contains a whole village. Driving to it, the road goes right through the middle and around the outside to a car park, making you wonder why you just drove past all of the stones and out into the countryside. The car park is actually just outside the ring fort that lies outside the stone circle.
• The earthwork is as much as 11 metres high, 460 metres across and about 5000 years old, with the main stone circle as much as 355 metres across inside it. Stonehenge's stone circle is just 35 metres across, and its earthwork is barely over 100 metres across. Incidentally, the earthwork ditch and external mound is what makes this a henge. The word itself is taken from Stonehenge, which under this definition actually fails to qualify as a henge.
• The stones are made from Sarsen sandstone, which shows pockmarks from the plant roots that used to grow through the sediment that created it.
• Most of the stones are large enough to completely overshadow a human, but are roughly shaped, without the finesse of Stonehenge (some of that finesse comes from reconstruction works in the 1900s). They were erected around 4600 years ago. The positions of missing stones are shown by small concrete marker posts.
• Inside the main circle are two smaller circles of large stones, with a group of smaller stones inside them. This is the South Inner Circle, which would have originally extended into where the village now lies.
• South Inner Circle.
• Solutional cavity in a main circle stone.
• Earthwork ditch and bank, with walkers for scale.
• West Kennet Avenue leaves off from this point, heading for some 800 metres over the surrounding fields. The first half of it (the half with fewer remaining original stones) can be seen in this picture.
• Looking across the southern half of the circle, with the Southern Inner Circle in the centre of the picture.
• Walking along the chalk bank.
• To give a sense of scale; looking across the northeast third of the circle. The far side of the ring can be seen about 360 metres away, far beyond the vilage. Sadly, very few of the stones remain on this side of the circle.
• One of the few remaining main circle stones.
• One of the North Inner Circle stones, which also used to extend into the village.
• The largest of the North Inner Circle stones, about 4.2 metres tall, and as much as 36 tonnes.
• Posers for scale. Impressive stone sizes, considering that they were lifted into position some 4600 years ago.
• The north entrance portal stone, rivalling the North Inner Circle stones.
• Crown-shaped stone.
• Eastern edge of the main circle, and an organised tour party.
• Near to Avebury is Silbury Hill. Nothing to rival the Great Pyramid of Giza, but this is the tallest prehistoric mound in Europe, at 40 metres high and about 160 metres across. It was constructed some 4750 years ago.

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