B2B Day 20 A Visit to Lacock

We are still staying in Holt, taking a day trip to the village of Lacock, which has appeared in many films.

We caught a bus from Holt (at the Three Lions, which must have been a former coaching inn from the looks of the building) to Melksham, 

The three lions

and were worried that we wouldn't make our connection to the next bus from Melksham to Lacock. Ken asked the driver to let us off in Melksham at the Bear, and it worked perfectly to make the connection with about two minutes to spare. We arrived early at the village before things were open, and wandered the streets seeing what seemed like countless tea shops.

The village of Lacock

We looked at and in St Cyriac's Church, which has an impressive memorial chapel to William Sherrington.

St. Cyriac's Church

Looking into the Sherrington memorial

 We then went to Lacock Abbey and got in to the grounds when it opened at 10:30 (the house opened at 11:00). We looked at the grounds, and saw sheep walking in a group in one direction, and then in another direction, and then back herded into a pen by two dogs. The dogs got all but one lamb back in the fold, but we went into the house before we saw what happened with the lamb.

Sheep going back and forth

The fact that the sundial was covered with a thin pool of water said it all about the weather, but we timed our outdoor photos before the rain really came.

Ken got some good photos of the exterior of Lacock Abbey, an Augustinian nunnery which was converted into a country house after Henry VIII's Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century.

Inside, we looked at the parts that were the remains of the medieval abbey.

Ken in the cloister

Then we toured the "country house" part of the abbey. One of the rooms was a kitchen, and Sara especially liked the list of "household wants" that could be used and reused, including items such as coal and isinglass.

The rooms were interesting, especially the great hall at the end, which had alcoves with various unusual statues. 

Apparently a visiting student put a lump of sugar on the goat's nose as a joke, and the final owner of the house enjoyed it so much she had it left there (the sugar has apparently been replaced a few times).

Spot the sugar lump!

 We had lunch at the cafe at the Abbey, and then looked at the photography museum on the grounds, since one of the owners of Lacock Abbey, William Henry Fox Talbot, was the inventor of the photo process of creating a negative image that could be reproduced (apparently he and Daguerre vie for the title of the first person to invent modern photography). We found it more interesting than we had anticipated, and knew that Mom and our friends Matthias and Rick would have enjoyed seeing cameras they had owned in the past (including Mom's Brownie camera).

Various vintage cameras (only part of a much larger display)

We then wandered around the village because we had time to spare before we caught our bus. We thought we would while away the time at one of the many tea shops we saw, but a couple of them were closed, and we didn't see as many as we thought there were, and what we saw didn't appeal to us (including the cafe/pub that listed "bugers" among its food offerings). We ended up at the George pub, which served an amazing hot cocoa that was wonderful on a cold, rainy day. 

We caught our bus from Lacock to Melksham and then waited for our next bus. A man was also waiting for the same bus, and we chatted with him a bit. He was taking the bus to visit his mom at a care home, because she had dementia. Somehow we really enjoyed meeting him and felt we were friends when we parted. After we got off the bus at Holt, it rained heavier (as usual) before we went to the Holt super store to pick up a few things and then home for dinner.