Reduced to splendour

Audley End, Essex A property in the care of English Heritage Built to attract a visit by James I, this hugely ambitious house has been massively reduced and yet remains both outstanding and magnificent.

-  John Goodall

MANY ancient houses of the Crown having been demolished, we have taken a liking to Audley End and purchased it from James, Earl of Suffolk, for £50,000.’ So wrote Charles II in a letter to his attorney general on April 17, 1669. The King was attracted to this leviathan house largely because of his enthusiasm for racing and its proximity to Newmarket. The Earl, meanwhile, was eager to sell because he was overwhelmed by immense inherited debts of more than £150,000, a product both of the proverbial extravagance of his father, but also by the cost of the house itself. This had been erected by his grandfather more than 60 years earlier and was out of all proportion to his needs.

Audley End is, in origin, a Benedictine priory, founded in about 1140 by Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex. It was established as part of his wider development of the manor of Walden with a market and castle (in what is now Saffron Walden) during the conflict between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda known as the Anarchy. Walden Priory was later promoted to the status of an abbey and, with an income of about £400 per annum at the Dissolution, it was a rich foundation. When the community surrendered to Henry VIII on March 22, 1538, its buildings and estate were passed to the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Audley.