Henry Fox Talbot the British inventor of photography resided in Lacock Abbey. He produced his first ‘photogenic drawings’ in 1834 and in the following year made his first camera negative at Lacock.
Lacock Abbey is a country house with monastic roots, indeed parts of the original abbey still exist as the house is built over the old cloisters which themselves featured in many of the Harry Potter movies.
What is probably the oldest photographic negative in the world the famous picture of an oriel window was made in this house by Fox Talbot.
Fox Talbot was a polymath who besides his interests in photography and thus optics and chemistry, was also a mathematician, linguist, astronomer, botanist and archaeologist. He spent many an hour at his desk writing up the results of his researches in his study pictured above.
The house along with the co-located Fox Talbot Museum is now owned by The National Trust together with the picturesque old Tithe Barn which was part of the estate of the original medieval abbey.
In honour of Fox Talbot as the inventor of what was the original negative photographic process, the Calotype, I made all of the pictures on colour negative film, which was nice. A small set of the other images from the day can be found here.