Sign of the Angel at Lacock

In my written itinerary, I had notes to myself to seek out the Bowden Hill viewpoint at sunset, and then to take the time to visit nearby St. Anne’s Church. It was not on my mind when we drove to find our lodging at the Sign of the Angel in Lacock. However, after passing a couple of very nice views as we approached Lacock, I stopped at the next one I saw and pulled into the convenient parking area to get out and take photos here on the edge of North Wessex Downs Area of Natural Beauty. Today, as I write this blog post weeks later, I discovered that I had accidentally stopped us exactly where my notes said to go. I guess I have good instincts.

As we entered the darling little medieval stone village of Lacock, I said to Margaret that there was no parking at the Inn, but we could park anywhere on the streets for free. Margaret exclaimed, “Now why wouldn’t the Inn provide parking?!” As we walked toward it, I pointed to the narrow streets and said, “I imagine that this is why not.”

Lacock village is mentioned in the famous Domesday book of 1086. The Lacock Abbey was established in 1232. It is one of the villages of southwest England that remains somehow intact for a thousand years. Because of its condition and age, the National Trust owns most of the town today.

There are five rooms available to rent for the night at the Sign of the Angel. The price is reasonable and the in-house restaurant food is excellent. The staff were so good to us. They are friendly, readily available, helpful, and accommodating. We were both very pleased with our room, the gorgeous shared living space available to all guests, and the entire Inn.

The Inn was built at the end of the 15th century, in 1482. The name is derived after a gold coin known as an “angel.” The Gold Angel was an English hammered coin dating from the first reign of Edward IV. The structure is believed to have been an Inn when it first opened. However, in the early 17th century the building was converted into a wool merchant’s house. In 1911, it was a shop.

I was pleased to learn that the Inn was featured in the film Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince as the Babberton Arms. In fact, other locations in the village were also in Harry Potter movies, as you see below. It was also a film set used in some of the Downton Abbey series, and in Wolf Hall. Coincidentally, I am currently watching both of these.

After we checked in, we explored the darling town of Lacock. A quintessential English village with timber-framed, stone and brick cottages and local shops. With its central grid of four streets, Lacock today is remarkably unmodernized for hundreds of years. Thank goodness for that.

Near our lodging was 14th century St Cyriac’s Church that we visited. We also spotted goods for sale in a tradition of the area called “Honesty Boxes.” Home canned goods were sitting on a ledge, for sale. You leave the appropriate amount of money and take the goods.

It reminds me of the time I picked up a cyclist hitchhiker many years ago in North Idaho. A man my age (we were both early twenties) had a flat tire on his bike and managed to get to a rest stop, where I came across him and agreed to take him to the next town with a bike shop. On the way, we stopped at a gas station where coffee was for sale on a table in the back of the store, out of sight of the attendant. There was a sign saying, “Coffee, 50 cents. Please leave money in the can.” Nearby was an empty Folgers coffee can with money in it. The young hitchhiker was from New York City and this blew his mind. He said he couldn’t wait to tell the people back home what he had seen. “This would never work in New York,” he told me. Well, it worked in Athol, Idaho in 1991 and it works in Lacock, Wiltshire in 2025.

The Lock-up or Blind House adjoins the famous Tithe Barn in East Street. This cell, topped with a stone dome, acted as the town lock-up, where drunk or disorderly miscreants could be kept overnight until they sobered up. Neither were open, so we only gazed at the outside. The building next to it is the restored 14th-century tithe barn once used by the nuns of Lacock to store grain.

It’s such a pretty, pretty village. Margaret and I were both impressed by blossoming flowers growing out of the sides of stone walls. We were charmed by the topiary, but it was very hard to see, hidden behind fences and hedges. It must be for the enjoyment of the property owners and not the public.

It was Sunday and they did not serve dinner, but they did serve a very late lunch, till 6 pm. So we ordered a very late lunch from the excellent menu at Sign of the Angel, and that night slept in a luxurious king bed that we shared, since none of the rooms have two beds. Though we were asked to provide our breakfast order the night before, it was not something prepared and held warm for us, but rather it was freshly prepared breakfast to our preferences. We found the coffee weak, which we remedied by asking them to brew an espresso each, and then dumped those into our coffee cups, ha ha. Other than coffee, we left Lacock the next morning exquisitely satisfied with everything about this place.