"Wiltshire Gothick" : Lacock Abbey

Lacock Abbey - which has for several centuries been a house - and Lacock village belong to the National Trust.  They provide backgrounds for numerous costume dramas, recent examples being "Wolf Hall" on television and the Harry Potter films.

The middle section of Lacock Abbey is in Neo-Gothic style of the early 1750s, and was built very shortly after the construction of Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill House.  The mood of this photo is intended to mimic that of the Gothic horror novel, a genre originated by Horace Walpole; the consequent vogue for Gothic horror was to become the subject of a pastiche in Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey".

Lacock Abbey comprises a somewhat confusing jigsaw of architectural elements.  Its oldest parts date from the 13th century, the most modern from the 19th century.  If the layout is confusing, the result is nonetheless delightful.  

The last of the modifications to Lacock Abbey house were made by the polymath William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877).  He is best known as the father of modern photography.  It was here at Lacock Abbey that he invented his system of "calotypes": this combined the stabilisation of images - the holy grail of photography - with the use of negative photographs on paper, which were in turn used to generate positives.