Audley End: A palace in all but name

By Carole Barclay

 Audley End in northern Essex is what people used to call a ‘stately home’ back in the 1930s when most of them were still owned by the landed gentry. Later it was taken over by the Special Operations Executive (SOE) to train Polish commandos preparing to join the resistance movement against the Nazi occupation during the Second World War. It remained in private hands until 1948, when was sold to the public. Today the house is one of the jewels in the crown of English Heritage, the charity that now runs many of our historic buildings and monuments.

Audley End shows that some sections of the ruling class could live like kings in the 17^th century. Thomas Howard, the first Earl of Suffolk, built this mansion on what had been a much more modest house built on the plunder of Walden Abbey during the Reformation.

Suffolk, who was the Lord High Treasurer of England, built his pile to impress a king. But when James Stuart, the first Scottish king of England, stayed at Audley End he began to suspect that his chancellor had had his greedy hand in the royal till. In 1619 Suffolk was charged with embezzlement and sent to the Tower of London. Only a hefty fine secured his release and he died in disgrace in 1626.

Later owners modernised the building and landscaped the grounds whilst demolishing whole wings to cut the costs of running the house. What was once the largest private house in the country was reduced to a third of its size. But it still retains much of its former grandeur and the interior houses period collections, a number of works of art, and exhibitions of life in Jacobean and Victorian days.

Audley End is open throughout the year, though it is wise to check in advance because the house is sometimes closed for filming. Buses from Saffron Walden pass nearby, and Audley End railway station is about a mile and a half away. There’s free parking on the site. Tickets cost £17.50, and £15.80 for students and pensioners. Admission is free for members of English Heritage.

Down House: A unique place in the history of science and evolution

by Carole Barclay

The works of Charles Darwin and Karl Marx shook and shocked Victorian Britain. Although they lived less than 20 miles apart from each other they never met. But Marx genuinely admired Darwin's On The Origin of the Species despite its “crude English style” and even sent Darwin a personally inscribed copy of the recently published second edition of Das Kapital in 1873.

            Down House was Darwin’s home for 40 years until his death in 1882. Darwin and his wife Emma remodelled the house and its extensive gardens, which Darwin used as an open-air laboratory. Here Darwin worked on his theory of evolution that was first published in 1859.

In Darwin’s day the house was in the village of Downe, a parish in Kent. It later became a girls’ school and the home of the Darwin Museum. Now part of Bromley in Greater London, the house, gardens and grounds is run by English Heritage and open to the public throughout the year.

            There’s plenty to see. Anyone interested in the life and times of Darwin will be fascinated by the gardens and the exhibits in the museum as well as rooms that have been restored to appear as they would have looked in Darwin’s day. There’s the inevitable visitors’ shop for books and souvenirs, and a very welcome café in the courtyard.

But beware – plan your journey unless you’re driving because it’s not easily served by public transport. Although you can get trains from central London to Bromley South or Orpington you’ve then got to get a bus for the rest of the journey.

Down House is in Luxted Road, Downe, Kent, BR6 7JT. The house, garden and grounds are open to the public at the usual English Heritage rates. There’s free parking and Down House opens daily from April to the end of October, and on weekends only from November until the end of March.

A Gem of a Tower

By Carole Barclay

The Palace of Westminster is what we call the Houses of Parliament today. It was originally a feudal royal palace, although little remains from the middle ages apart from Westminster Hall, where Charles Stuart was tried and condemned to death for treason by Parliament in 1649, and a tower that was built around 1365 to house the personal treasure of Edward III.  By the 1600s the Jewel Tower, once part of the wall that surrounded the royal palace gardens, had been reduced to a public records store-room, and it remained an obscure part of the past until it was restored and opened to the public in 1956.

Sadly the moat, which was filled with water between 1963 and the 1990s, has been drained and the Parliamentary history exhibition was closed a few years ago. The Jewel Tower, a World Heritage site, is now run by English Heritage. The current displays include a model of the medieval Palace of Westminster, replicas of precious objects and areas of set dressing, including an 18th-century clerk's office. Whether this justifies the £5 admission charge for non-English Heritage members depends on how keen you are on the medieval period. But entrance to the garden, the small café and bookshop is free, so it’s worth a visit just for that if you’re in the vicinity.

The Jewel Tower is easily missed in the hurly-burly that surrounds the Westminster ‘village’ but it still gets around 30,000 visitors a year, mostly overseas tourists who have come to explore Westminster Abbey and Parliament. It is located on Abingdon Street, opposite the southern end of the Houses of Parliament (Victoria Tower).