Lacock Abbey

“It is a little bit of magic realized: -of natural magic. You make the powers of nature work for you, and no wonder your work is well and quickly done.”
William Henry Fox Talbot 
And so to Lacock Abbey, a place often passed on my way to sites on business but never stopping to enjoy. Something of a pilgrimage to the home of UK photography and it’s quite a quirky place, with architectural styles stretching back to its’ roots as an Augustinian nunnery founded in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury. After the dissolution it was remodelled as a Tudor mansion and later, much later, a Victorian home for William Henry Fox Talbot, ‘father’ of UK photography as I knew it for many years. Younger visitors may recognize it as the location for Harry Potter, it’s a much-filmed location.
Today was an Easter Egg Hunt and the place was full of young, and young at heart, following the clues around the grounds. I was stopped at one point in the woodland by one group, a woman and two young children, who asked if I knew to what animal the prints on the signpost belonged. Really put me on the spot, broad pads, sharp claws (for digging?), four prints … mmm, my thoughts went back to my recent house-sit in Essex - Badger? They decided to go with it and promised a share of the spoils if I was right.
A couple of hours visiting the house and chatting with the volunteers who had lots of interesting background details about the house and how it was built and later extended. Lunch at the pub on the edge of the village so we were under cover for the only shower of the day, then a wander through the picturesque village and back to the car park. Coincidentally the woman with the two children was also returning to her car – “well done, you were right, it was a badger”. The children were pleased with their rewards, so was I – a chocolate crème egg.