Lacock
Lacock in Wiltshire is one of the most completely preserved medieval and early modern villages in England, a National Trust village whose combination of the fourteenth-century Lacock Abbey, the medieval village street plan, the picturesque houses of various periods from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century and the significance of the abbey as the birthplace of photography creates a heritage destination of quite exceptional depth and historical breadth. The absence of pylons, telegraph poles and television aerials from the village makes it one of the most frequently used film locations in England for period productions.
Lacock Abbey, founded in 1232 as an Augustinian nunnery and converted to a house following the Dissolution, was the home of William Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of the positive-negative photographic process whose calotype method, developed at Lacock in the 1840s, established the fundamental principle of modern photography. The Fox Talbot Museum in the gate-house of the abbey traces the development of the photographic process from the earliest experiments at Lacock to the modern era.
The village is entirely in the ownership of the National Trust and the complete control of the built fabric that this provides has allowed the preservation of a medieval street plan and a collection of buildings of many periods that together create one of the most comprehensive small historic settlement experiences available in England. The film productions that have used Lacock include Pride and Prejudice, Downton Abbey and numerous other period dramas.