The Fox Talbot Museum And Abbey Lodge And Entrance Gates

The Fox Talbot Museum and Abbey Lodge, along with the entrance gates, is a barn dating from the 16th century. An early 20th-century house was added at the east end, and the remainder was converted into a photography museum in 1975. The building is constructed of rubble stone with a stone slate roof and coped gables. The south side facing the road features one blocked Tudor-arched upper opening and two 19th-century doorways leading to the museum. The house on the right end has a two-storey, two-window range with 2-light mullion windows. The north side includes two lean-to cart entries, and there is a two-light hollow-moulded mullion window near the right cart entry. Inside the museum, there is a notable 9½ bay roof supported by tie-beam trusses with king-posts and collar pieces tenoned into the king-posts on each side, which is an unusual truss form also found at Lacock Abbey. The interior of the house has not been inspected. There is an attached low screen wall with ball-finials on the piers and 19th-century iron gates. Historical photographs reveal significant alterations to the road front, which originally had buttresses, two elliptical-arched cart entries, and applied Gothick tracery on the west end wall. It is believed to have been built as a stable by Sir William Sharington of Lacock Abbey in the mid-16th century.