Castle Combe & Lacock Village

Some places are so perfect they feel conjured rather than real. Castle Combe is decidedly one of them. Regularly crowned ‘the prettiest village in England,’ this Cotswold gem seems engineered to make you exhale stress. Honey-coloured stone cottages cluster along a babbling brook with no traffic lights, no chain stores – just uninterrupted tranquility.

Then there’s Lacock, equally enchanting but with more to explore. This National Trust village is a living film set where Harry Potter, Downton Abbey, and Pride and Prejudice captured English period perfection. But Lacock’s authentic claim to fame: this is the birthplace of photography itself. William Henry Fox Talbot created the first photographic negative here in 1835.