
Matilda Theresa Talbot
Owner 1916-1944
born 15th July 1871, Dumfries, Scotland
died 25th March 1958, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire
Introduction
Born: Matilda Theresa Gilchrist-Clark
Assumed the name Talbot in 1917
The conventional view of Matilda Talbot is that she was a slightly stuffy spinster, but that overlooks all the evidence to the contrary
There were her travels to work in a French field hospital during the First World War, which was not without some danger, being close to the front lines in the Alsace region
Then there was the fact that she changed her name to Talbot, from her given name of Gilchrist-Clark, to honour her uncle Charles Talbot, who had left the Lacock estate to her in his will
The cooking school that she ran at the Abbey and holding regional food events in the Great Hall
Organising the 1932 Lacock Pageant to celebrate the 700th anniversary of the founding of Lacock Abbey and attended by over 10,000 people
Looking after Lacock’s Archive, which included amongst other things
- What was thought at the time to be the one remaining legible copy of the 1225 definitive issue of Magna Carta (The picture at the top is of the facsimile that the British Museum had made for Matilda in 1947 in the red leather bound case that Fox Talbot had made to house the original)
- The substantial collection of Fox Talbot’s photographs
Those are the headlines, the easy bit. Now what I intend to do is to give a slightly more personal and hopefully rounded view of Matilda.

Matilda Talbot
By Paul Ayshford Methuen, 1949
© National Trust