This article relates to the period when Lacock Abbey was an Augustinian nunnery. For the history of the abbey from the Reformation to the present day, see Lacock Abbey.
Lacock Abbey was a monastery founded at Lacock, in the English county of Wiltshire, in the early 13th century by Ela, Countess of Salisbury, as a house of Augustinian canonesses regular. It was seized by the crown in 1539 during the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry VIII. The building then became a country house, Lacock Abbey, notable as the site of Henry Fox Talbot's early experiments in photography.
Foundation and founder It seems that the monastery's foundation was resolved upon by Ela, Countess of Salisbury in 1226. Ela was the only child and the heir of William FitzPatrick, 2nd Earl of Salisbury, and at his death, when still a child, she became Countess of Salisbury in her own right. At the age of nine she had been married to William Longespée, an illegitimate son of King Henry II.
It was shortly after her husband's death that Countess Ela decided on the foundation. Her eldest son, also William, being a minor, the plan was delayed until he could give his consent. However, in 1229, the foundress made her move by giving her manor of Lacock, together with the moiety of the advowson of the church, to God and the Blessed Mary and St Bernard, toward the building there of an abbey of nuns to be called "locus beate Marie" ("the place of the Blessed Mary"). She had the consent of her son, and the foundation was subsequently confirmed by charters of Henry III, on 31 January 1230 and 26 February following.Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34), pp. 10–11; H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 2.
Countess Ela laid the abbey's first stone on 16 April 1232 at a site on Snail's Meadow ("Snaylesmede"), lying between the village and the River Avon.John Gough Nichols (ed.), William Lisle Bowles, Annals and Antiquities of Lacock Abbey, London, 1835, p. 171 The first nuns were veiled that same year, beginning with Alicia Garinges, who was probably previously a nun of the English Augustinian house Goring Priory, Oxfordshire, a house which had been established before 1181.House of Austin nuns: The priory of Goring, in William Page (ed.), A History of the County of Oxford, vol. 2, London, 1907, pp. 103–104. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol2/pp103-104 [accessed 21 October 2017]; H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 3. When Burnham Abbey was established in Buckinghamshire in 1265/6 by Richard, Earl of Cornwall, an entire community of nuns was brought from Goring.Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women, Routledge, London, 1994, p. 56.
From the dedication it is fairly clear that the founder's intention at first had been to found a nunnery that would belong to the Cistercian Order. However, this was preempted by a decision of the 1228 Cistercian general chapter to confirm its opposition to accepting responsibility for any more convents of women.Joseph-Marie Canivez (ed.), Statuta Capitulorum generalium ordinis Cisterciensis: ab anno 1116 ad annum 1786, t. 2: 1221–1261, Bureaux de la Revue, Louvain, 1934, p. 68, c. 16. Moreover, when Robert Bingham, Bishop of Salisbury gave his formal approval to the foundation on 20 April 1230, he enjoined upon the nuns the following of the Rule of St Augustine.Houses of Augustinian canonesses: Abbey of Lacock, in Ralph B. Pugh & Elizabeth Crittall (edd.), A History of the County of Wiltshire, vol. 3, London, 1956, pp. 303–316. British History Online http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/wilts/vol3/pp303-316 [accessed 21 October 2017]. This made of the house one of the relatively few Augustinian nunneries in England.Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women, Routledge, London, 1994, pp. 40–41.
It is most likely that Ela intended from the first to become abbess of her own foundation, a sign of this being the fact that the house was ruled in the initial period by a prioress, Wymarca. Advised apparently by Saint Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury, she took the habit as a nun in late 1237 or early 1238 and was elected at the latest by the feast of the Assumption (15 August) of 1239, receiving the bishop's blessing as abbess for some reason at Sherston. She remained abbess until 31 December 1257, when she resigned in favour of Beatrice of Kent. She died on the feast of St Bartholomew, 24 August 1261, and was buried in the choir of the abbey church.H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 4.
To the initial endowment of the manor and village of Lacock, were added eventually by Ela and her son, among other properties, the manors of Hatherop, Bishopstrow, Chitterne, Upham in Aldbourne and Woodmancote.Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34), pp. 11–12.
Development Throughout the thirteenth century Lady Ela's descendants remained close to the abbey, both in bestowing material support and by choosing it as a preferred burial place. Of Ela's eight or nine children, two sons ‒ Richard, a canon of Salisbury and Stephen, Justiciar of Ireland ‒ were buried in the abbey church, as was the heart of a third son, Nicholas, Bishop of Salisbury. Ela's granddaughter Margaret, Countess of Lincoln, took a close interest in the abbey and in 1309 was buried in the abbey church. Other granddaughters, the sisters Katherine and Lorica FitzWalter, became nuns at Lacock.
The building of the Abbey presumably took some time, since Henry III contributed four oaks from the forest of Chippenham in 1246 and a further 15 from the royal forests in 1264. In 1247 he donated 50 marks, while in 1285 Edward I gave 10 oaks from Melksham Forest.H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 3–4.
In 1242 Henry III granted a fair at Lacock on the vigil, the feast, and the morrow of the Translation of St Thomas of Canterbury (7 July) and a Tuesday market,Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34), pp. 15–16. in 1257 at Chitterne a fair on the vigil and feast of St Peter and St Paul (29 June) and the six days following and a Monday market,Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34), p. 70. and in 1260 a Friday market at Lacock.Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34), p. 16. Along with various wood-gathering rights, the Abbey also received in 1260 from the king 40 acres of Melksham Forest. Various members of the nobility similarly made various grants of lands and of rents in the latter part of the century, even after Ela's death, though no important land was acquired after 1300. Other privileges were countered by obligations and exactions in the mesh of feudal obligations,Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34). though the nuns sometimes managed to contest these at law or to obtain remittance or exemption from the crown.
Developments in the 14th century included a lady-chapel, a separate lodging for the abbess, and major alterations to the dorter and frater, with work on remodelling the cloister continuing into the next century.H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 6. Already in the time of the second abbess, Beatrice of Kent, a water conduit was constructed bringing supplies from Bowden Hill, along with a corn mill within the Abbey close.
As elsewhere, the early presence of noblewomen among the nuns soon gave way to the daughters of modestly prosperous landowners and burgesses. In a note of the expenses for the clothing in 1395–1396 of Joan, the daughter of Nicholas Samborne, her habit consisted of a tunic of white woollen cloth, a mantle lined with white cloth for summer and another lined with fur for winter, a fur pilch (a type of leather cloak with the fur on the inside), a veil, and wimple. She had also trousseau that included a bed with mattress, blankets, coverlet, and tester, a silver spoon and a mazer-bowl (a wide, shallow bowl).H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine51 (1947) 6. As was often the case with medieval English nunneries,Roberta Gilchrist, Gender and Material Culture: The Archaeology of Religious Women, Routledge, London, 1994, pp. 41. the house was not always in good financial health and in 1403 it was given exemption from royal taxation for reason of poverty. It was given 40 years' exemption in 1447 after the bell-tower and bells, the bakehouse, the brewery, and two barns full of corn at Lacock had been set afire by lightning and destroyed, as had the grange buildings at Chitterne.H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 6–7.
Little is known with any continuity of the abbey's accounts, but some details are known of the abbey's farming and other income. As the centuries passed, there seems to have been a general tendency to let out the lands rather than exploiting them directly; this practice included a coal-mine at Hanham in Gloucestershire which the abbey owned and leased out. Apart from consumption of meat of animals for their own nutrition, in 1476 the abbey was engaged in sheep-rearing on a commercial scale to the extent of having a flock of over 2,000 sheep, most of them on the manor of Chitterne. The inventory drawn up at Chitterne at the Dissolution records 600 wethers, 600 ewes, and 300 hogs; at the same period, among their employees were 15 hinds and a swanherd. Moreover, while the indications that can be gleaned from the uneven surviving data are insufficient for a fuller picture, in August 1535, the commissioner John Ap Rice reported that "the house is very clene, well prepared and well ordered" and in 1536 the commissioners noted that the church, house and the buildings in general were "in very good astate", and they added: "Owing by the house nil, and to the house nil".
Spiritual health There exist no surviving records of the outcome of bishops’ visitations, though these are known to have taken place, at least in the 14th and 15th centuries. It would appear that these were not always occasions when the nuns wanted to convince the bishop of the austerity of their life, since the cellaress's roll for Wednesday 30 August 1347 records the purchase of salmon, lobsters, crabs and lampreys for the visitation by Bishop Robert Wyvil of Salisbury.
The abbey contracted various obligations of praying for dead benefactors and of giving alms for that purpose. An early benefactor, Sir John Bluet, claimed burial in a Lady chapel to be constructed for the purpose; but it was also agreed that there would be a chantry to pray for the souls of him and his wife, and that on his anniversary a halfpenny would be given to each of a thousand poor.Kenneth H. Rogers, Lacock Abbey Charters, Wiltshire Record Society, Devizes, 1979 (= Wiltshire Record Society 34), pp. 20–22; H.F. Chettle, Lacock Abbey, in Wiltshire Archaeological and Natural History Magazine 51 (1947) 4–5.