AUDLEY END HOUSE AND GARDENS

HISTORY

Robert Adam created a suite of reception rooms for Sir John Griffin Griffin in the mid-1760s on the ground floor of the south wing. It represented the height of neoclassical taste, and was executed by the leading craftsmen of the day. The plasterwork was by Joseph Rose, carving and gilding by William and Robert Adair, furniture by Gordon and Tait (much of which survives in the house), and decorative painting by Biagio Rebecca.

When the principal reception rooms were moved back to the first floor by the 3rd Lord Braybrooke (see below), these rooms were adapted as the state apartment. Adam's library, the culmination of the sequence of rooms, was destroyed in order to bring the floor level of the rooms over it down to that of the remainder of the first floor.

The surviving sequence (partly restored in the 1960s) now comprises the dining parlour, the Great Drawing Room and the Little Drawing Room, the last with exquisite painted Roman decoration by Rebecca.

The Gothick chapel at the north-east corner of the house was created for Sir John in about 1768 by John Hobcraft, and survives little altered and complete with its furniture (save for the loss of the organ loft in the 1820s).^[5]

In 1785, to commemorate his elevation to the peerage as Baron Howard de Walden, Sir John completed the refitting of the saloon, on the first floor of the south wing, below its Jacobean ceiling. The white and gold panelling incorporates a series of paintings adapted or created by Rebecca, illustrating Sir John’s descent from Thomas, Lord Audley, who created the first house at Audley End in the 16th century.

 OPENING TIMES 

The weekend the 10:00 -16:00

http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/audley-end-house-and-gardens

How do get there from El Vendrell:
The Vendrell a El Prat in car the Prat a London Stansted in plane the London Stansted a Cambrige in train Crosscauntry and bus 301 and wolk and Audley.