Historic Description of Lacock Abbey

Lacock Abbey

Ela the foundress of Lacock (and Hinton Charterhouse), was the daughter and heiress of William III, Earl of Salisbury, and was born in 1188; she married William Longespee, the natural son of Henry I by Rosamond. He died in 1226, and was the first person to be buried in the new Salisbury Cathedral. During seven years of her widowhood she served as Sheriff of Wilts more than once (the copy of Magna Charta kept at Lacock was deposited there during one of these terms of office); she had often resolved to found monasteries, and at length it was revealed to her that she should establish one in the land called Snaylesmede near Lacock, in honour of the Virgin and St Bernard. This she did, and inaugurated both Lacock and Hinton on the same day in April 1232, Lacock in the morning, Hinton in the afternoon.

In 1238 she took the habit at Lacock, which was under the rule of St Augustine, and in 1240 became Abbess. Growing old, she appointed a successor, Beatrice of Kent, in her lifetime (on December 31, 1257), lived on quietly till August 24, 1261, and was buried in the choir of the church. Her story is told in a history of the place written by one of the chaplains who served it, and preserved in a unique manuscript practically destroyed in the fire which ravaged the Cottonian Library in 1731. Fortunately extracts had been made from it before this.

The history of the Abbey seems to have been uneventful. At the Suppression it was valued at £160 a year clear (others say £194); at that time there were eighteen nuns. It was granted to Sir William Sharington on June 16 1540, and subsequently came into the family of the Talbots, in whom it now is. Sharington converted the buildings into a dwelling-house, destroying the church. With this exception, the house is exceptionally well preserved.

What we have of it consists of practically the whole of the cloister buildings, minus the church. The outer court is gone.

The church occupied the southern side of the cloister. It was 143 feet long by 28 feet, in seven bays. The north wall of it remains. There were no aisles and no structural division between nave and choir. The pulpitum was opposite the eastern door into the cloister, and just east of that the dorter stairs led, skew-wise, into the church. The west bay of the nave was cut off by a screen, and therefore the western cloister door was farther east than usual.

The only addition made to it was a Lady Chapel of three bays, begun in 1315, and attached to the south side of the chancel. The contract for this, a very interesting one, is printed by Mr Brakspear.

Part of Ela’s tomb, which was in the choir, lies now in the south walk of the cloister; it is a fourteenth-century substitute for the original, but the inscription, now defective, was no doubt copied from the old tomb. In full, it ran thus:

The cloister is eighty feet square, originally an Early English building with a pentice roof and an arcade of Purbeck marble, of which fragments have been found.

In the middle of the fourteenth century the west walk was rebuilt, with a flat wooden roof. It was intended to do the same by the south walk, but the plan was changed, and a stone vault was decided on. The west bays of the south walk are in this style. Then the design was changed, and the rest of the walk built in fully developed Perpendicular.

Next came the east walk. Here, when the chapter house entrance was reached, there was a difficulty about carrying the vaulting across it; it was cleverly managed so as to interfere as little as possible with the thirteenth-century work. “Across the end of the alley in line with the outer wall of the north walk is a wide panelled arch with canopied niches in the jambs.” This helps to throw the vaulting shafts of the alley farther south.

The north walk is of similar design. Awkwardness was felt when it was found that the westernmost clear bay would have to be two feet wider than the rest. Eventually the west walk was done away with. So much for the cloister proper; now for buildings which surround it.

The East Range of Lacock Abbey

Next to the church is, first, a room with two chapels at its east end; perhaps the western part was the sacristy. Here and in the chapter house the east wall and windows are modern. Both buildings project eastward beyond the general line of the east range, which is marked by a pier. In the thickness of the west wall are the stairs to the dorter.

The chapter house is of nearly the same size. In the west wall are a central door and two side openings. The east part is divided into two aisles, the west into three compartments corresponding to the three western openings. The vaulting therefore is peculiar.

Next to this is the vaulted passage leading to the infirmary, which is gone; and next to it again, the warming house, divided into two aisles running north and south by three columns. Note the window seats and fireplace. The flying buttress outside (on the east) was added in the fifteenth century.

Outside this in the cloister wall were two recesses for book-cupboards. The northern one was in the fifteenth century made into an entrance to the warming house, which previously was entered by a passage under the east end of the frater. When the book-cupboard was done away the south bay of the warming house seems to have been screened off to keep books in.

Over the east range runs the dorter, lengthened and altered in the fourteenth century, and made into a long gallery in the sixteenth, whereby the ancient arrangement of central passages and cubicles on each side is obliterated. North of it was the rere-dorter standing east and west.

The North Range of Lacock Abbey

The frater, 79 feet by 27 feet, is cut up into rooms and passages; a sub-vault is beneath it. The access to the reader’s pulpit can be seen, but the pulpit has given way to a fireplace. The kitchen is at the west end, the great fireplace, 14 feet wide, at the south end of it. In the cloister, east of the frater door, is the lavatory, unaltered. In a recess are mural paintings: St Augustine blessing an abbess, a garden on left, and another picture of an abbess.

Over the western bays of the north walk is a room of uncertain use.

The West Range of Lacock Abbey

The lower story only is original. It is divided into three chambers. In the southernmost, perhaps the chaplain’s room, are some early sketches on the north wall: St Christopher and St Andrew.

Through the middle chamber, which served as the outer parlour, was the entrance from outer court to cloister.

The northernmost is the largest and has a fine fireplace with the initials of Abbess Elena de Montfort (1421). It may have been used by guests.

The upper storey of this range was built in 1754 and contains a large hall. “The roof,” says Mr Britton in 1814, “is decorated with numerous coats of arms emblazoned in their proper colours, and the side walls are ornamented with a great number and variety of small statues, busts, etc., in terra cotta, relating to the history of the Abbey.”

Formerly the Abbess’s lodging was over the west range and extended along the upper storey of the south. In the west side was her large hall, entered from the north. The stone cresting over the present front door is from the fireplace. Her private chapel was over the west end of the south walk, and over the rest of the south walk, going east, was a gallery giving her access to the dorter. It was altered and lengthened in the sixteenth century.

West of the west front were some buildings now destroyed. In the grounds is a fine large cauldron, cast by Peter Waghevens of Mechlin in the year 1500.

The village of Lacock is full of fine old houses of many periods, and the parish church should be examined, if only for the very rich and beautiful north-east chapel and the tomb of Sir William Sharington.

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