On my visit to Lacock I visited the Abbey grounds - unfortunately the house was still closed, but the gardens were very beautiful - drifts of crocus and snowdrops carpeting the grass. It was fun spotting all the places I'd seen in the cloisters in Pride and Prejudice (Wickham behaving disreputably at University) and in the Harry Potter films. The exhibition on early photography was fascinating and there is a good selection of books in the bookshop to tempt! From the National Trust: The Abbey sits at the heart of Lacock village. It was founded in 1232 and converted into a country house c.1540. The atmospheric monastic rooms include medieval cloisters, a sacristy and chapter house and have survived largely intact. They have featured in two Harry Potter films, plus the recent The Other Boleyn Girl. The handsome 16th-century stable courtyard houses a clockhouse, brewery and bakehouse.
The pioneering photographic achievements of William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-77), who invented the negative/positive process, can be experienced in the Fox Talbot Museum. His descendants gave the Abbey and village to the Trust in 1944. A stroll through the Abbey's Victorian woodland grounds reveals a stunning display of flowers in spring and magnificent trees, while the Botanic Garden reflects the plant collections of Fox Talbot – for whom botany was a lifelong scientific interest.