The Rose Garden at Lacock Abbey

Posted on February 1, 2015 by martinpapworth

https://archaeologynationaltrustsw.wordpress.com/category/lacock/

7th May 1832

Monday

My Dear Henry

The Urn is up in my garden! Oh! how pretty! Persian lilacs in blow! Horse chesnuts coming in flower!

Long ago, if the day was dragging, we’d engage in conversation over afternoon tea, a nonsense exchange

featuring National Trust places with all the wrong facts (yes I know.. we are far older, more sensible and open

plan now). It ended with the words.. “of course that’s where photography was invented”. According to the rules

that was never Lacock.

Last October, Sue showed me the Rose Garden. It is a 12.5m diameter circular iron trellis work punctuated by

four arched entrances to north, south, east and west, and in between – four curving rose beds. To the north is an

alcove seat set in a wall under a gothic arch. When sitting here you can see through the north arch of the Rose

Garden and appreciate the classic stone Urn on its pedestal.. which forms its centre piece.

— The Rose Garden looking east in October.

That was Lady Elizabeth’s alcove Sue said and this is her Rose Garden. Lady Elizabeth Fox-Strangeways was

the mother of William Henry Fox Talbot (the inventor of photography). The garden was becoming tired. Sue

needed to repair the trellis work and replace the soil in the rose beds.

I looked at the metal edging on concrete and she said: “This Rose Garden was only put up in 1992, the old one,

so I’ve been told was taken down in the 1960s but they kept the trellis and stored it in a barn. I don’t think it’s in

the right place though. We keep tripping up over bits of metal when we cut the grass.”

We agreed to meet again when the turf was up and the trellis down and that was last Tuesday.

The early 19th century was a massive time of discovery. Researchers did not limit themselves to particular

subjects.. they grazed across the broad sweep of science and art. They were often clever wealthy land owners

with money and time on their hands and sharp inquiring minds. NT SW has Andrew Crosse at Fyne Court (West

Somerset) who engaged in electrical experiments. The locals thought he was acting as God and bringing things

to life through harnessing lightning via wires draped in trees around his mansion. Mary Shelley heard him lecture

in London.

William Bankes travelled in Egypt brought back the Philae obelisk to Kingston Lacy (Dorset) and helped decipher

the hieroglyphs.

In 1832, W.Henry Fox Talbot married his wife Constance and took her to Lake Como in Italy. His frustration at not

being able to draw the beauty of the scene led him to experiment and find a way to capture an image. The first

photos anywhere. Science to enable art.

I returned to the Rose Garden last week. The metal spikes sticking out of the ground were clear. Sue, Reg and

the garden volunteers cleared off the topsoil and they found that each fixing was set in lead within a chunk of

dressed stone. The stones were all different shapes and sizes and were probably reused pieces of Henry’s

home.. medieval Lacock Abbey.

Sue was right though, it was in the wrong place.. in 1992 it had been built 5m west of its old location. The view

from the alcove should not be blocked by the Rose Garden.

There were six stones to each of the four entrances and two intermediary stones to carry the trellis between

them. The outer ring was to carry swags of trailing roses. The inner stones carried the arched trellises for each of

the entrances. The view to the west between the stone settings framed the spire of Lacock’s medieval St Cyriac’s

church.

— The view east towards the church through the 1832 east Rose Garden entrance. The site of the old urn

pedestal lies in the centre of the photo in front of the 1992 urn.

We measured to the centre and dug down. There was the plinth for Lady Elizabeth’s Urn. Her son Henry (he

preferred his second name) took a picture of it for her in ..1840. Sue had relocated the scene of one of the

earliest photographs anywhere.

— W.H. Fox Talbot’s photograph of the Rose Garden taken in June 1840. One of a group of photographs he

sent to the Italian botanist Antoino Bertoloni. He wrote back to say that this was the image he liked the

best.

Reg brought the garden ladder and I photographed it again.

— The Rose Garden from the garden ladder. The turf cut from the 1992 garden but the stones from the

1830s garden and central pedestal 5m left of it.