Wiltshire: A pilgrimage

At first glance you wouldn't realise the significance of this rather lovely oriel window... I have wanted to see it for many years though, in fact ever since I saw an exhibition on the history of photography at the Media Museum in Bradford. For this window was the subject of the earliest surviving photographic negative, made in 1835 by William Henry Fox Talbot. It is a window in Lacock Abbey (of which more tomorrow). Lacock was Fox Talbot's home. A scientist, polymath and inventor, he had long wanted to find a way to fix images on paper and through research and experimentation, he devised the calotype negative, using silver salted paper.  

Fox Talbot was certainly a pioneer in photographic history although there were other processes, notably the Daguerreotype developed at the same time in France, that also had a profound impact. Fox Talbot's work was the first to enable many prints to be made of the same image. Those Victorians... what a debt we owe them all.

It seemed only fitting that I should take a photograph of the window, in homage - and it is very pretty.