Hi I'm Maddie and today I've come to Audley End.
This incredible place has
a rich and varied history
and there is so much to explore.
So, let's get started.
I'm having a bit of a nose
around the main house and I've just come across
this corridor and it's like walking
through a natural history museum.
You've just got these cabinets
of curiosities
everywhere.
Hi Peter!
Peter is curator
of collections here at Audley End
and wow, this house
is incredible.
Tell me a bit about the room that we're sat in
right now. Well, the room we're in now is
called the Saloon and it's where
the family in the 18th and 19th century
would have enjoyed tea
perhaps after dinner, they would have entertained
their guests here, just somewhere to
relax and spend time enjoying the view
perhaps. So, I guess we would
think of this as a lounge or sitting
room, something like that. Exactly. But when you
say the family, are we talking about
the Braybrookes at this point?
Well, there have been many different owners of Audley End
over the years, some with children
some without children,
people would have had very different ideas about
how they want to furnish the room, so in this room
for example, we have a ceiling that
is 400 years old from the Jacobean period
We have paintings from the 18th century
We have furnishings from the 19th
century, so it's a real
mixture of different periods and
styles and tastes of different family members.
I love the idea that this house
has belonged to
a family of travellers and explorers
and I love
the eclectic style that you get here.
It's amazing. Well, I really
enjoy working with all these objects and
sometimes people have an idea of what a typical
English country house is, but this
completely blows that out of the water, you find
things from every corner of the world, it's like
a microcosm of the world
in the collections that you find here.
So, this is the Great Hall
Wow.
Is this one of the first rooms that guests or visitors
would have seen? This is really the first
room that people would see when they came into the house.
and it's definitely designed to have the wow factor.
You know you've arrived at a really
great, important house when you
come into this space. What was the room
used for? Well it really came into it's
own when there were big grand events -
weddings, Christmas dinners,
any kind of feast or banquet,
this room would have been filled with tables
and chairs and people dining.
But when those types of events
weren't happening, and the family with their
8 children in the 19th century were here
on their own, we know that the children liked to
play badminton here.
Why? How? A few years ago, when we were
cleaning the Great Hall screen,
we found some 19th century shuttlecocks
lodged high up
so wayward shots perhaps that
they couldn't retrieve.
Peter, there is a lot of taxidermy
at Audley End, but what's so special
about this one? Well, this is one of
my favourites. Meet Paddy the
female otter. Well, the 5th Lord Braybrooke
acquired Paddy during a
fishing trip to Ireland. And when we say acquired
Paddy, this is Paddy as a
an alive otter? As a live otter,
as a young
otter pup, and Paddy
was brought back to Audley End and
as the label says, lived up
afterwards for many years in a pond
in the Rose Garden, so became something of a
family pet, and then
after Paddy's death, Paddy became
part of the taxidermy collection.
They didn't want to let go of Paddy?
Well, Paddy has been immortalised here and
will stay here forever more.
Wow, how interesting.
This is
the definition of a
cabinet of curiosities
I love it. And if we have a little
look inside, you can see that
it contains perhaps some of the more unusual
quirky, types of objects
that might have intrigued children
perhaps horrified them.
I can understand that, and you say horrified
I'm looking at that - that is disgusting.
Well, this is a lovely specimen, that is a
Russian rats tail killed in Sebastopol,
still with a little bit of fur on the end.
And, there's a little tin
there, can I open it up? Yes, well this little tin
has a label on the front
that says chocolate nougat from Africa
If you open it
you can see it's still
inside. Woah.
How old is that?
That we think is about
120 years old.
Why didn't they eat it?
I don't trust anyone who leaves a bit of
chocolate in a tin. Would you like to eat
that? No, I'm alright.
We have come to the top of the house
to use this key.
Where is it going to lead us?
Well this isn't somewhere that people can normally
go to, but I thought perhaps you might
like to have a look on the roof? Because you can see
the landscape and the rest of the site you can explore
afterwards. Ah some good views then.
So, here we are on the roof
and from here you can really appreciate
this beautiful landscape.
It looks very natural. It does, yes.
But actually it's completely artificial
and that was what Capability Brown was
known for doing in the 18th century
so, the lawn is levelled off
the river is widened to look like a lake,
even the hillside is
in some respects artificial with trees
positioned at particular places.
I've been
wandering around the kitchen gardens and I
am surrounded by delicious
fruits and vegetables,
and that's all thanks to Head Gardener
here, Louise.
This is a wonderful place to be.
It really does feel
alive, there's something quite magical about
gardens I find anyway, with all the
life bursting around you. So it's all
used, it's all harvested.
It's either used on sites,
so through the tea rooms
and the restaurant on site.
We also sell some to visitors, so we have a
a small produce shop,
and the majority of it we sell to
a local organic box scheme.
It's not just the kitchen gardens you have
here, there's an ornamental garden
as well, yes - what do you call that?
The major ornamental area is the
Parterre Garden, at the rear of the
house. What is Parterre?
Parterre means pattern on the ground,
so it's a bit like a tapestry.
It's really designed to be seen from above.
What is it that you do here?
I'm the historian and I've worked on a number of projects
including this one in the service wing.
What I love is that you can explore the kitchen
gardens and see the produce,
then you can come to the service wing
and get an idea for the recipes
that would be made, and then you can
walk to the main hall and imagine it being served
at some lavish banquet.
You really get a sense of the whole picture.
Yes, you certainly do and you can go from
field to fork here which is just such a
unusual situation to be able to do. The fact that we've got
the kitchen garden growing things authentically
how they were in the 1880s
and we know that because of some of the records that we've got.
We've got a diary from one of the gardeners
And then we can go all the way through to
the kitchens and
we are cooking those recipes
So it's really nice to be able to do that
and have that level of authenticity.
Wow. I've come to explore
the stables in the grounds
and from the outside you would never
know this was a home
to horses, because the building itself
is so grand
but I've come to talk to
Head Groom, this is Charlie,
and of course we're here with - Hovis
Hovis is lovely.
He's a very handsome boy.
And why were there horses here at Audley End?
All the families
used them for carriage driving, it was the way
they travelled around, they did a lot of hunting
as well, the ladies rode side saddle
and it was
for show, a status symbol,
the more horses and carriages you had - the richer you were
So how many horses did they have?
They would have had on average about
17 or 18 horses at a time, but they had
room for up to 40 because they needed to
accommodate all their guests horses when they came to visit
as well. Really? 40 horses
in just this area around where we are now?
Yes. Wow. And how many horses are here today?
Today, we have 5 resident horses living
here all year round.
I've had such
a wonderful day here at Audley End and
there really is something for everybody
all year round. Whether you
want to wander through the grounds,
and the gardens, or
feel immersed in the service wing, or
even pick apart those layers of history
in the main house and explore
all of the fascinating curiosities.
Being here is
a bit like going through
a journey through time and I can't wait to
come back with my family.