Audley End House and Gardens

Audley End is an early 17th-century Jacobean prodigy house outside Saffron Walden, a market town in Essex. A perfect day out on your Private Tour of England.

Feel free to roam the marvellous state rooms reflecting the third Lord Braybrooke’s taste. Take the opportunity to go into Lady Braybrooke’s private apartments and make yourself at home. Discover what life was like for the servants working here by wandering the Service Wing with kitchens, a dairy and a laundry room. Take a stroll through the award-winning gardens that extraordinary landscaper Lancelot “Capability” Brown designed in 1762.

Formerly known as Walden Abbey, Audley End was a monastery that Henry VIIII dissolved and sold to Lord Chancellor Sir Thomas Audley in 1538. That old house was demolished and the largest house in England was built for Thomas Howard, the Lord Treasurer and 1st Earl of Suffolk, between 1603-14. Charles II bought the property in 1667 but barely went there, so he gave it back to the Howards in 1701, and they downsized the house. In 1825 Richard Griffin, the 3rd Baron Braybrooke, inherited the house and title, and he restored some of the original Jacobean aspects.

By March 1941, the Special Operations Executive used the house as a general holding camp; afterwards, in 1948, the Ministry of Works, the predecessor of English Heritage, bought the estate.

Visit this grand prodigy house on your Private Tour of England and treat yourself to a luxurious stay at The University Arms in Cambridge. Combine a tour to beautiful Cambridge and spend another day learning about aviation at the Duxford Aircraft Museum.