In late March on a chilly day, under a blanket of stone grey cloud, the grand old house is drained of colour. Audley End is a remnant of a much larger palatial country house, a so-called ‘prodigy’ house built at the start of the 17th Century by a courtier to James I, who cooked the books to cover the ridiculous costs. The design is clean and symmetrical, almost modern. The two front porches, were stuck on later for Charles II and his queen Catherine of Braganza and led to separate apartments; they appear at odds with the rest of the building and perhaps were considered the ‘monstrous carbuncles’ of their day. The stone facing is a local limestone called ‘clutch’ that does not wear well and hence the patchy facade.
The walled gardens are earth brown and bare, being recently tilled for the first spring planting; even so, they are magnificent, having been recently restored by English Heritage. The inner boundaries of the vegetable beds are formed by perfectly manicured lines of espalier apple and pear trees; the great walls of red brick are adorned with fan-trained apples, plums and figs. Apples are described as the powerhouse of the kitchen garden because there were many early and late varieties and they could be stored on racks in cool, dark sheds and cooked in many ways through the winter. The walled gardens hold some 130 apple and 50 pear varieties and are a wonderful place to see so many in such a small space; but they are a fraction of the ‘3,500 named apple, pear, plum, cherry, vine and cob nut cultivars‘ held by the national fruit collection at Brogdale near Faversham, Kent.
In early May, after a warm and dry April, on a day of sunshine tempered by a cool easterly, both the House and the gardens are transformed into something much more rich and colourful. The huge horse chestnut Aesculus hippocastanum trees are in their prime and the walled gardens are blossoming. The gardens still rely on tulips and primulas for much of their colour but the peonies are not far from flowering and will then transform the parterres.
