ABBEY

Lacock Abbey was founded as an Augustinian nunnery in the early thirteenth century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury. After the Dissolution of the , Henry VIII sold the Abbey to Sir William Sharington who converted it into a house. Around 1550, Sharington added a banqueting house at the top of the octagonal tower. [Not open to the public.] The octagonal stone table was used to lay out the food and wine, with the base carved with figures of Bacchus, Ceres and Apicius set into shell niches. Guests would have viewed the gardens beneath with the more energetic climbing the narrow winding stairs to the balustraded roof of the tower to get an even better view.

A recent resistivity survey showed that there are at least two phases of garden design. The 1714 estate plan, drawn when John Ivory Talbot inherited Lacock, shows a typical medieval layout, including the measurements of most sections. The Lower Garden was to the south east of the Prospect Tower with the fountain garden to the south, and the much smaller Lady’s Garden at 2 rods and 30 perch to the west. The entrance to the Abbey was from the Bath to London road, through the ‘Great Gates’ to the Great Court. A part was sectioned off for a ‘New Garden’. To the north was the ‘Kitching Garden’ of just over 2 acres with the ‘Great Old Orchard’ to the north, bordering the River.

John Ivory Talbot wrote to Henry Davenport in 1722, discussing Stephen Switzer’s involvement with the garden. Switzer was an apprentice at Brompton Nursery and worked at Blenheim Palace between 1705-16. In 1718 he published Ichonographia Rustica ‘containing directions for the general distribution of a country seat into rural and extensive gardens, parks, paddocks etc’. The frontispiece of the book is a Franco-Dutch design, with two grassed rectangles surrounded by urns, with straight avenues between the grass and around the outside. At the end of the garden is a circular basin with a central fountain. In his book, Switzer discusses the error of

VISIT GARDENS

07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com

using too much box as used at Hampton Court ‘a Fashion brought over out of Holland by the Dutch Gardeners, who us’d it to a fault, especially in .’

At Lacock, there is no box. And Switzer moved the gardens from the South to the North. The main axial ran from the main drive and the approach was marked by two Doric columns topped by a Sphinx that is still there today. The approach ended in ‘The Great Bason’ encircled by a walkway. The walkway continued to the north-east marked with a bastion at the corner and then south back towards the house. There appears to be a bridge at the south-east corner. Between the main axial and the walkway was an L-shaped canal with a collection of small islands between the canal and the round pond. Apart from the north-south walks, there were also diagonal paths although there were no bridges over the canal. The ‘Kitching Garden’ and the ‘Small Orchard’ remain unmoved.

The formal gardens to the south were replaced by a ha-ha and terrace overlooking a new area of parkland. Was this the area designed by Brown? It’s known that he was working at Lacock between 1754 and 1755, as there was a payment to him of £500. To the North of the Great Bason runs the Bide Brook. John Ivory Talbot referred to ‘Rockwork’ in his diary and with evidence gained from 2012 survey suggests that this feature was built by hauling 33 load stones from Bowden in 1749. It is possible that this was a grotto with the load stones forming an arch over the entrance.

In 1772, John Ivory Talbot died and Lacock was inherited by John Talbot. He had no children and left the estate to his nephew, William Davenport Talbot. In 1781 William Emes was paid for creating a ‘new river’ at Lacock as well as ‘lath and plaster’ alterations made to the Rockwork; these can be seen by studying the 1827 estate map. Emes was also working for the Talbots in 1780s at their other estate, Margam Park in Wales. In 1800, William Henry Fox Talbot’s father died when he was only five months old. His mother married again, and the estate map of 1827 shows the development in the garden: the south terrace was extended and the ponds of the water garden and the canal (except for the L-shaped foot at the south) were filled in.

Fox Talbot was a keen plantsman and there is extensive correspondence between his uncle William Thomas Horner Fox Strangways of Abbotsbury and William Hooker, director at Kew Gardens. Fox Talbot planted a Botanic Garden to the west of the Abbey and a rose garden where the ‘Great Bason’ had been. Fox Talbot is best known as an early photographer and this rose garden was photographed by him in June 1840 on salt and silver nitrate covered paper.

The Kitchen Garden is now used for allotments for the village and lies next to the Botanic Garden.

VISIT GARDENS

07940 877568 www.visitgardens.com