Lacock Village

Attached to Lacock Abbey is the scenic little village with its many quite old houses and buildings...

Including the Tithe Barn, which has seen many uses since
abbey times; and new stone roofs, too, presumably

The village gaol, where people were sent to cool off, dry out,
await justice

Interior thereof; looks positively spacious
by our standards

Pretty, old house

Said to have been one of King John's hunting lodges

Interesting design

And, always, flowers, everywhere

Lacock Abbey

From Avebury we headed generally north, with three great houses and gardens to see along the Bristol Channel. The first was Lacock Abbey, which I thought would be a quick stop, half a dozen pix, done. Lacock Abbey goes back to the 13th century, however, a wealthy womens' residence really (while spouses were off crusading, warring, plundering, whatever), then, after the Dissolution, a wealthy man's Renaissance  manor and residence, then a George/Victorian residence. But wait, there's more. Among the latter owners was William Henry Fox Talbot, one of the 19th century inventors of photography, so there's a good little museum on the development of photography there; and still more. When the Trust got Lacock, the whole village evidently was included, so you've got that to account for too, including an interesting old Medieval parish church. Did I mention that two of the Harry Poppins movies were filmed in part at Lacock? So there is really a great deal going on at Lacock despite the fact that it is hardly one of greatest houses.

Main entrance to present-day Lacock Abbey

Artsy-fartsy interpretation

In the original abbey part; this was possibly Professor Snapes'
classroom

On the hall in the cloister, bosses still polychromed

Peephole in the staircase to the abbess'
rooms, so she could keep an eye on things

Original Medieval floor tiles

Possibly Professor Snapes' classroom; or someone else's

This is absolutely all that Warner Bros. will let the Trust say
about Harry Potter

Back on the cloister, a pretty day

Moving right along from Medieval-land through Fantasy-land
to Victorian-land...did you know that in the later 19th century
England you could mail eggs? Now you have to use Federal
Express special handling, etc.

In the nursery

Flashing back to Lord Sharrington's tower and study...1600s

Murano glass chandelier in the Victorian long hall

Now in the much earlier Gothic Hall

Including Gandalf saying "I have no memory
of this place"

Fox Talbot, among the Victorians who
redefined "Renaissance Man": astronomer,
mathematician, Fellow of the Royal Society,
chemist, linguist (he was one of the few who
could read cuneiform; won honors in his
Cambridge class for translating Macbeth into
iambic classical Greek)

His contributions to photography included getting an image
deposited on a chemically-treated piece of paper, and his
"mousetrap" camera (the little box on the table); and writing
and publishing the first book to include photographs, The
Pencil of Nature

Avebury 2013

Next morning we decamped and drove the two miles over to old friend Avebury and its henge, the largest of them all, too large to see or comprehend from the ground, center of a huge megalithic complex. All c. 2500 BC give or take...

Google view of Avebury; actually there are two smaller
circles inside the big one

A few degrees of the arc

Obviously Avebury enjoyed quite a few
visitors during the solstice too

A small offering from one of the worshippers

And another; plastic flowers...how nice

Vicki poses for scale by one of the medium-sized rocks

A bit of the huge ditch and bank that surrounds the thing

More of the arc

Adoration of the Mystic Sheep

At our favorite store in these precincts

And now driving back north toward more homes and gardens,
another White Horse, the Cherhill White Horse, a youngster,
done in 1780

And a neolithic bus stop, complete with small menhir

Silbury Hill And Environs

At length we found a nice lay by, a cul-de-sac really, used mostly by dog-walkers, just outside the nano-hamlet of Beckhampton, perhaps a mile from Silbury Hill and two from Avebury. Vicki felt in need of a day off, and I am always happy to do nothing and then rest. So she rested and read, I blogged, and then later I went for a long walk.

At the lay by; we are becoming experts at finding such lay bys: just follow any
car containing a dog or dogs, and you will be led to a nice dog walk area and
carpark; just be careful where you step

View out the windshield: Marlborough Downs; note the conspicuous mounds
near the center top: megalithic sites, neolithic burials sites; this is the axis mundi
of such things

My walk took me along a low ridge and through a couple of beautiful woods

Some exposed chalk substrate, what this area is famous for, among other things;
what they make White Horses out of...

At last, near the end of the trail, I look up and see a mound; my inner Indiana Jones
comes to life

But the view from the top is not so promising; foiled again!

The highway, I discover, has a nice little footpath leading back to the village

Along the way, a nice prospect of Silbury Hill; a completely artificial hill, about
400 feet high, 5 acres in coverage; millions of man-hours would have been
required to build it; despite many excavations, nothing significant has ever been
found in it; dated reliably to 4750 BC, with numerous renovations; the largest of
pre-historic earthen works

The footpath gave out in Beckhampton, at the Waggon and
Horses pub

In whose carpark I found not two

But four Lotus 7s--a favorite car--not a surprise, really, since one sees them often
on the weekends in the countryside, and six had passed me on the highway

Turns out they were part of a 31-car tour from the Netherlands

Another, much closer view of Silbury Hill

Later, the weather cleared a bit, and we were blessed with a beautiful Wiltshire scene