Audley End

Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, built it between 1603 and 1614 on the site of Walden Abbey, at a scale meant to entertain the court; James I is said to have remarked it was too large for a king though it might do for a Lord Treasurer, which was a comment on how Howard had paid for it. Charles II bought it in 1668 as a base for Newmarket races, then the Crown let it go and successive owners demolished the outer courts, so what stands is roughly a third of the original. Robert Adam remodelled interiors in the 1760s and Capability Brown laid out the park at the same time. The service wing survives complete, with kitchens, laundry and dairy staffed as a Victorian working household, and a nineteenth-century organic kitchen garden with a two-hundred-year-old vine still produces.

What you actually see

• The Jacobean front - the surviving third of a house built to impress a court.
• The Adam interiors - 1760s remodelling inside the older shell.
• The service wing - kitchens, laundry and dairy shown as a working household.
• The kitchen garden - Victorian layout with a two-hundred-year-old vine.

When to go

April to October for full opening of house, service wing and gardens; winter opening is limited and the house often closes entirely. The park and stables run events through summer.

Honest expectations

Only part of the house is open and room-by-room access varies by season. The site is spread out with long walks between house, stables and garden. Peak weekends and event days are busy and parking fills.

Nearby

Saffron Walden is a short walk; Cambridge lies north and Bishop's Stortford south.