Lacock Abbey was founded in 1232 by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, and run by nuns for three centuries until Sir William Sharington bought it at the Dissolution and turned it into a house, keeping the 15th-century cloisters and adding an octagonal tower. In 1835 William Henry Fox Talbot made the earliest surviving photographic negative here, a tiny view of an oriel window in the South Gallery, and the Fox Talbot Museum tells that story with his original experiments. The cloisters double as Hogwarts corridors in the first two Harry Potter films, and the village, given to the National Trust with the abbey in 1944, has stood in for Cranford and Downton. Dogs are welcome in the shop, the Stables Cafe and on the waymarked walks, but not in the abbey, cloister or museum. Reviewers love the carved bosses hidden in the cloister vaults, the spring wild garlic in the woods and the village chocolate shop. Tips from regulars: ignore satnav directions to the abbey gate and use the Hither Way car park, a ten-minute walk from the village, and expect little for small children beyond the play park.
