Barb & John's Hols: Audley End and Cambridge

A big mansion and a busy University City

We'd been to Audley End, a very large stately home, once before during a previous visit to Saffron Walden. At that time a garden fete was in progress in the grounds, so it was closed to visitors and we were not able see inside the house.

Since we keep driving past this wonderful historic house and catch teasing glimpses of the mansion we decided it was time to go and have a proper tour of the place. It was fantastic!

John at Audley End

We walked around the extensive gardens first. There seemed to be acres and acres of them, with ponds and cascades, bridges and a couple of Romanesque follies as well as a few monuments. We then toured the stables. This set of buildings looks large enough to be mistaken for the mansion itself and there were still some horses kept in residence there.

Follie in the distance

cascades

Walled garden

greenhouse and flower beds

the stables

We also did a tour of the servants area which included the dairy, laundries, kitchens etc. These were very well displayed in period style with projected images on the walls of "servants" telling their stories of what their daily duties were. It sounded like very hard work.

the dry laundry

the wet laundry

The actual mansion itself is sublime! It's hard to believe it was once three times it's current size enclosing a double courtyard. It's still massively big.

It was first built by Thomas, Lord Audley who was Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor in 1538 on the site of Walden Abbey.Various ancestors extended and improved the house and had the grounds landscaped by Capability Brown.

front entrance to Audley End

The furnishings and artwork are also lavish and expensive. Fit for a king. It reminded Barb very much of Hampton Court Palace and in its past Charles II briefly owned it and resided there before giving it back to the family as it was too expensive to run. It's run today by English Heritage and there are volunteers in every room of the house giving information about the history of the place to visitors.

The best part was the nursery. Not only were you allowed to take photos in there (banned in the rest of the house because of possible light damage to the paintings), they positively encouraged you to dress up in period costume as well. As you can imagine, Barb needed no encouragement!

Nanny Barb

dolls house in the nursery

We still had a few hours in the afternoon to spare, so we parked the car at the Trumpington Park & Ride on the outskirts of Cambridge and caught the bus into Cambridge for a look around. Being later in the afternoon most of the tourists had already left for the day, so it wasn't as busy as our previous visits have been.

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We had a good chance to stroll around admiring the architecture of all the different colleges and churches and watching people punting in boats on the River Cam under the Mathematical Bridge.
The old round church had scaffolding all around it for some refurbishing work. Luckily we'd been in here once before. The highlight for John was the really excellent pot of tea we shared, together with slightly warm Danish pastries, served by two delightful Turkish students just opposite Kings College.