4 Churches to Explore in Wiltshire

Lacock Abbey is a country house with monastic roots and Britain's birthplace of photography. It is set in spacious wooded grounds, with plenty of space to picnic, and is now recognizable from films varying from Pride and Prejudice to Harry Potter. It was home to the Fox Talbot family. In the early 19th century, polymath William Henry Fox Talbot invented the photographic negative, a cornerstone in the rise of photography as both an art and a popular hobby.

Malmesbury Abbey is one of the oldest and most important religious sites in England, with a history going back to at least the 7th century. It was one of the few English houses with a continuous history from the 7th century through to the Dissolution of the Monasteries. The present building dates from about 1180. Over half of the great church has disappeared, but the remainder is used as a parish church and boasts some fine Romanesque architecture and art.

Salisbury Cathedral was built between 1220 and 1258, in a style we now call Early English Gothic style. it houses the best preserved of the four surviving original copies of the Magna Carta; it has the oldest working clock in Europe (1386); it has the largest cathedral cloisters and cathedral close in Britain. The cathedral celebrated the 750th anniversary of its consecration

St Laurence's Church, Bradford-on-Avon, Wiltshire, is one of very few surviving Anglo-Saxon churches in England that does not show later medieval alteration or rebuilding. The church is dedicated to St Laurence and documentary sources suggest it may have been founded by Saint Aldhelm around 700, although the architectural style suggests a 10th- or 11th-century date. St. Laurence's stands on rising ground close to the larger Norman parish church of the Holy Trinity.