National Trust seeks to fix “dangerous” chimney at Lacock
The museum is dedicated to the life and work of early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot and the birth of modern photography
The National Trust wants to repair an “unstable” chimney stack at the Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock – after “dangerous” pieces of render started falling from it.
The Fox Talbot Museum is located at the front gates to the grounds of Lacock Abbey – one of Wiltshire’s most-visited tourist attractions.
The museum is dedicated to the life and work of early photography pioneer William Henry Fox Talbot and the birth of modern photography.
Fox Talbot invented the first photo negative – a process of reproducing images that was used from the 1840s until the advent of digital photography in the mid-noughties.
The chimney in question is located above the main visitor entrance route into the grounds of the Abbey, where Fox Talbot lived and worked between the 1830s and his death in 1877.
Now, conservationists are asking Wiltshire Council for Listed Building Consent to carry out urgent repairs.
Until recently, the chimney stack was rendered and the brickwork beneath was not visible.
But when parts of the render started to fall off, the property team investigated and found that “large areas of render were dangerous and the entire removal of the loose render was deemed necessary to make the situation safe.”
Below the render, they found “a patchwork of various inappropriate cement, containing products over a soft red brick.”
And they discovered that “the stack was in fact two adjacent stacks, with little apparent structural ties either to each other or to the stone gable of the building.”
The proposed works are to the chimney’s stack at the first floor level and above.
The Trust proposes to use stainless steel bars to strengthen the chimney stack before rendering it again so that the brace cannot be seen.
The Grade II-listed building in which the Fox Talbot Museum is housed was originally built as a barn in the 1500s.
The east end of the building was converted into a house in the 20th century, which is when the chimney stack was built.
The Trust says that if nothing is done, “the visitor entrance route will be jeopardised by unstable masonry above.
“The historic aesthetics to the building would be significantly altered by the exposed, damaged brickwork,” they say.
A decision from Wiltshire Council is expected by the end of July.