Saturday, August 7, 2010

An Amble around Audley End

Regular readers of this Blog will know that I generally expect to cycle two days in three. If I could I'd probably cycle every day - but life gets in the way sometimes. When I say cycle I mean a distance of generally more than 32Km/20miles, I don't count my 0.6Km round trip to buy a newspaper which happens pretty much most mornings. There are exceptions, family holidays and when my Mum comes to stay. I then switch to walking as my form of exercise. That is why I have not been posting recently my Mum has come down to stay.


I picked my Mum up on Wednesday - the round trip was around 600 miles - I ended up doing more driving in a day than I would normally do in a couple of months. For the first time ever there were no road works or accidents on the trip. (on the side of the road I was on). We did see an incident where a double-decker bus appeared to have caught fire by the side of the road - when we passed the fire engines and emergency vehicles had gone - except for a few Highway workers clearing up. With two or three lanes closed there were tailbacks of over 5 miles - it must have been pretty bad at the peak of the fire.


Yesterday we visited Audley End near Saffron Walden a medium-sized town in Essex, 15miles/24Km south of Cambridge. The last time we visited was probably around 15 years ago when my son was a young lad and the highlight was the Miniature Railway - a 1.5mile trip through the Estate woodland. This time we went down for the afternoon and looked around the House and Gardens. The only minor hiccup was that we parked in the wrong car park at first. We stopped in the Railway car park before realising the error of our ways! The car park for the House is on the other side of the road to one side.


Actually there was another hiccup. Although I cycle more than I drive and I try to avoid too much unnecessary driving I am occasionally one of those dreaded 4x4 drivers. I have a Land Rover Discovery. When the kids were younger it was great for holidays in the Lake District - we could carry stuff for two weeks holiday plus several bikes and a canoe without any problems. It was also good for towing a trailer full of Scout Camp gear. When my son was a Scout I used to go and help out on the Scout Camps. Back to the car - this one has been very disappointing with several breakdowns including failures of the suspension system and the brakes have had problems. I now have a problem with a squealing noise - twice I have had the car looked at by the garage - but neither time have they been able to fix it. They think it might be due to the low mileage allowing a bit of rust build up on the disk brakes. It is driving me nuts as it is intermittent.


Back to Audley End - as we walked from the car park to the house one of the "follies" was visible up on one of the hills behind the house.It is the Temple of Concord.


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A view of the house peeping through the trees.




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The River Cam flows in front of the house - although it has been artificially widened - this is the road bridge over the Cam.




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On the day we visited (Friday) there was also a cricket Match in play on the extensive lawns in front of the house. You can see another folly up on the hill nestling just inside the woods.




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The house is really quite large and despite the large number of cars in the car-park it did not feel too busy. The house is built on the site of Walden Abbey and has increased and decreased in size as various owners made their mark. At one stage it was owned by King Charles II as a base for attending Newmarket Races. The house's current size and decor were largely the result of the third Baron Braybrooke. During WWII the house was used by the Special Operations Executive as a secret training base of Polish soldiers.


The house and gardens have been returned to the state they were as a "family" home. Albeit one supported by a host of servants. One of the interesting places to visit is the Service Wing containing the Kitchen, Scullery, Dairy and laundry. The laundry consisted of the wet laundry where sinks were used to wash the clothes and linen and then the dry laundry where it was dried and ironed and pressed - mainly by hand although there were mangles and large hand operated presses. There was also a game safe and a meat safe - two separate, small buildings




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Also in the Service Wing were the bells connected to Bell pulls in the main house which were used to summon the servants.




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They had some odd named rooms. These two - "Roast beef Room" and "Jester Room" struck me as rather strange. There is now a a Cafe/Restaurant were we stopped for some refreshments, I had a slice of delicious Coffee and Walnut cake.




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We then walked down to the Kitchen Gardens which would have been used to supply a lot of the food eaten in the main house. The gardens are now being run as an Organic Kitchen Garden with vegetables growing in the centre and fruit trees along the walls and along the edges of the main vegetable plots. Along the centre line of the garden is the Orchard house with grape vines laden with grapes and tomatoes of different varieties. The gardeners sheds and the boiler house are also open. The green houses were originally kept warm using a twin coke fired boiler system. One boiler would be run for a week and then the other would take over. Then when the first had cooled down it would be cleaned ready to take over. Both boilers were below ground level as the heated water would then rise in the pipes to keep the green houses warm. Apparently they aimed to keep the temperature regulated to within a degree. There was also a dark shed for mushrooms and forcing plants.


The trick was to spread out the growing seasons to ensure the Main House got a plentiful supply of vegetables. One of the more difficult fruits to grow was the pineapple. It required two seasons to fruit and you only get one pineapple per plant. The Head Gardener had a house but a couple of under-gardeners lived in the Kitchen Garden in the Bothy. One such under-gardener wrote a diary of his time in the garden. His actual diary is on display with amazingly neat hand-writing.


Flowers would also have been grown for decoration in the main house.




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Some nice plums growing up one of the Kitchen Garden Walls.




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Every inch of wall space was taken up with fruit trees - we saw plums, apples and pears of many different varieties.




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I think we arrived around 2pm it was approaching 6pm by the time we left and we had not had chance to walk through the Parterre and see some of the follies or the Stable Block or the Tea House. We should have taken a picnic and stayed for the day. We all thoroughly enjoyed our visit and have enjoyed reading the Guide Book back home and no I don't get commission from recommending the place.

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