Judith Johnson
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Audley End

20/6/2015

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Cook in the Kitchen
A visit to Audley End had been on my wish-list for years, so a recent gift of a year’s entry to English Heritage properties combined with a friend’s birthday celebration in Maldon, Essex, gave me all the impetus I needed.  We were lucky enough to arrive on Audley in Bloom day, with music from the Saffron Walden County High School Jazz band and gardening events laid on. Readers of this blog will already know that I have a great passion for museums, history and gardens, so my English Heritage card is, for me, the equivalent of an enormous box of chocolates, only much better!

Like that of many English country houses, Audley End’s history is a long, eventful one. Thomas, Lord Audley, Henry VIII's Lord Chancellor, converted the buildings of the original Benedictine priory, Walden Abbey, into a mansion after the abbey’s suppression in 1538. His grandson Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk, rebuilt it in about 1605–14 on the scale of a royal palace, which it briefly became after Charles II purchased it in 1667. In the 1760s Robert Adam transformed the house for Sir John Griffin Griffin, while Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown landscaped the park. Richard Neville, later 3rd Baron Braybrooke, made further changes after 1820. During the 1940s the House was taken over by the Ministry of Defence, and used, among other things, as the headquarters of the Polish Section of the Special Operations Executive. There is a memorial to the 108 Poles who died in its service on the main drive.


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There were some fascinating things to see in the house  - I particularly liked the cabinets of curiosities, packed with shells, minerals, oddities picked up on travels, including some grave-beads from Egyptian tombs. Not for me the cases of stuffed creatures, though this might attract visitors who have embraced the recent trend for taxidermy classes!  There is a small case in the Saloon of mementoes from the Crimean War, in which two Neville sons, Henry and Grey, were killed, a touching reminder that war brings grief to families across the social divide. An envelope with faded writing contains “Flowers gathered from cemetery of Scutari where the English officers are buried”, and another “Flowers gathered from the grave of The Hon Henry Neville, Grenadier Guards, picked at Cathcarts Hill Cemetery on 6th September 1867. The gravestone was in a good state of preservation”.  Henry was killed aged 30 at the Battle of Inkerman on 5th November 1854, and his younger brother Grey died six days later, aged 24, in hospital at Scutari (Florence Nightingale’s base) after being injured in the Charge of the Heavy Brigade at the Battle of Balaclava on 25th October 1854. Was it their mother, or sister, I wonder, who picked these flowers after making the long journey to Turkey?

The children’s nursery wing has been restored, and there are drawings of the two boys, along with their siblings. Here, as in other parts of Audley End, there is a living breathing personification of a former staff member - the governess, who is happy to chat, in character.  There are dressing-up clothes, a large dolls’ house, and wooden Ark and animals to play with for younger visitors, and, gratifying sight for this former child, the bookworms’ delight - a full book-case in each room.

PictureChild's bed, Nursery Wing
The house’s libraries are spectacular, including the main one, full from floor to ceiling with reference books, a combination of three collections. I would have liked to leaf through Sir Richard Hoare’s History of Modern Wiltshire, as not only do my Hayter ancestors hail from that county, but I am also related to Hoares.  Pepys aficionados might be interested to know that Richard Griffin, 3rd Baron Braybrooke, edited the first published edition of the diary, deciphered for the first time in its entirety and transcribed by the Reverend John Smith, and released in two volumes in 1825. I am currently on the 1664 volume of the Diary, and was very pleased to see, among the many paintings on display in the House, a portrait (from the studio of Peter Lely) of Barbara Villiers, the Lady Castlemaine admired so much by our Samuel!  Pepys himself visited the house, so I look forward to reading his comments.  

There is a Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman by Hans Holbein the Younger in the Drawing Room - I’ve seen original Holbeins now in The Hague, Berlin, London and New York, and the excitement of viewing this great painting master’s work at first hand never diminishes. 

There is a piano in the Library, on which visitors may sit and play a tune. My fingers sadly had forgotten the piece of Bach I used to practise as a child, and ‘Chopsticks’ seemed a little unsuitable for the august surroundings!  There is a wonderful illuminated book here, and beside it an extract from a letter from the American visitor Elizabeth Davis Bancroft, recollecting her stay (published in Letters from England, 1847): “In the immense bay window was a large Louis Quatorze table, round which the ladies all placed themselves at their embroidery, though I preferred looking over curious illuminated missals.” A woman after my own heart!

I liked the Coal Gallery, on the attic floor, where the fuel for the house was kept, along with stores of candles to light residents to bed. Even here the English class system was evident, with two different types of candles, one for domestics and another kind for guests. In the 1880s, we were told, between 175 and 200 tons of coal were used to heat the house each year. That’s a lot of coal-scuttles...

Which takes me on to my other favourite features of Audley End: the Laundry, Kitchen, and Dairy. These have been restored to their former glory, with relevant artefacts, and written, audio-visual or living witnesses bring to life the past days of those who worked there.  Personally I find the stories of those who laboured Downstairs as fascinating as those who lived Upstairs! For children, this could be a great, hands-on introduction to our social history.

So to the garden: we joined the guided tour of the Organic Walled Kitchen Garden led by Head Gardener Alan North, who sported, if I may so, a very fetching pair of tanned knees!  We saw the glorious irises and peonies border, the 200 year old vines in the old greenhouse, splendidly healthy-looking brassicas, and more. The organic vegetable gardeners among us nodded sagely at mention of garden pests, nuisance weeds and seaweed fertilisers.  We missed the guided tour by expert local volunteers of the landscape gardens - maybe another time!

After our morning's exertions, we eagerly headed for lunch in the Tea Room - good value at £7.95 for a generous bowl of delicious slow-cooked lamb stew with coriander and chick-peas, corand a large hunk of bread and butter, modestly advertised as a light lunch!

Last but not least, there was the Stable Block, with its beautiful Jacobean brickwork. Informative displays explained the annual cycle of work on the estate, and its inter-connected commerce with the communities surrounding it. There was a stunning table in the block, made from a huge septarian nodule unearthed in the grounds. And there was the gentle Bob, a gorgeous, massive black cross Shire-Percheron, impeccably groomed, with soft feathered hooves. His young groom kindly invited me to stroke Bob while he continued to eat from his hay sack in a dignified manner. His head alone, I reckon, was getting on for a metre long! 

When our son was small and funds were tight, we invested in family membership of the National Trust. His favourite local attractions were Scotney Castle, Bodiam Castle, and Rudyard Kipling’s home, Batemans.  We made innumerable return visits and got a lot of wear out of that card! English Heritage annual family membership of £88 includes up to six accompanying children, which seems excellent value, and on our visit to Audley End we saw lots of little ones enjoying the child-friendly exhibitions, the beautiful grounds where they could run, cycle and see the ducks and swans, even a pony in the stable-yard available for short rides on the rein. For Mums, Dads and grandparents, there was the added benefit of a lovely playground right next to the Organic Garden’s adjoining Cart-Yard Cafe, affording a relaxing cuppa while the kids wore themselves out on the climbing-frames. Bliss!

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Head Gardener Alan North
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Good enough to eat!
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Areas of Ignorance

7/6/2015

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Every now and then, in the blizzard of information that comes at us from the media, something goes straight home. Such a moment came along for me last week when Professor Alan Tomlinson of the University of Brighton talked, on BBC Radio 4, of "areas of significant ignorance we should remedy". I believe in this instance he was referring to the unholy shenanigans of FIFA.

A friend of mine gets up early every day to read the papers in depth. She likes to read a British broadsheet, a German one, and an American one, taking in the different points of view in order to gain a textured understanding of current affairs. I listen to BBC Radio 4's Today programme before work, and skim the BBC website for news, but I prefer to wait for an in-depth book on most subjects.

On the evening of the recent general election I was chatting with the young daughter of an acquaintance, who told me that one of her teachers was descended from a suffragette, and had talked to her pupils about her grandmother's struggles. I asked the girl's mother, had she voted yet? She replied that she hadn't, that she might pop in on her way home, but that the trouble was she didn't really know anything about politics, and didn't know who to vote for. I heard similar views on the radio leading up to the election from others who felt it was nothing to do with them.

One of the books I've read this year was Martin Meredith's The State of Africa. I wanted to make up for my woeful ignorance of modern African history. It's a really accessible work - although most of it made deeply grim reading about Africa's corrupt leaders and the immense human suffering resulting from their self-will run riot (bar the shining exception of Nelson Mandela). If this book doesn't make you feel grateful for living in a liberal democracy (with all its faults), I don't know what would. It caused, for me, a fundamental shift in my thinking, and it confirmed again the truth of the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So what other areas of significant ignorance have I begun to remedy this year? I've benefited from the efforts of William Dalrymple (The Last Mughal illuminated some of the back story of my Indian great-great-grandmother), Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography (background to American democracy, and Jackie Kay (Red Dust Road told me something about being adopted, and having a mixed-race ancestry). Of course, good fiction too  helps me find a deeper understanding of our human condition, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Half of a Yellow Sun  met both requirements superbly (a beautifully told story with wonderful characters and an introduction to modern Nigerian history).

My list of reading goals this year includes a study of the EEC. I learnt something about the EEC when I did my French A-Level (my kindly Francophile teacher told us how deeply it had depressed him researching the subject, when he saw how the French had manipulated the EEC), but ever since I have tended to slide away from reading most stuff on the subject, seeing it as dull, dry and bureaucratic. I intend, especially with a referendum looming, to make an effort to remedy my shameful ignorance. Any recommendations would be very welcome.

I love good fiction, so I sometimes have to tear myself away from the information smorgasbord! I note, for instance, that I've read thirteen non-fiction books this year and only  six fiction, so I'm aiming to balance that up before the end of the year.

My 91 year old mother has been an avid reader all her life, and read under the bedclothes with a torch when a child (as I did!). She still has a discerning eye. My husband, a writer himself, has recently been reading The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge, passed on to him by Mum, who said of it, "It was absolutely fascinating, I couldn't put it down". She did, however, abandon Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose after several chapters, describing it as: "boring".

We hesitated about giving her Martin's first book, a supernatural thriller, Niedermayer & Hart, to read, but she lapped it up.

"It didn't give you nightmares then, Mum?"

"Oh no, darling, I stayed up all night reading it."

An author's never sure who will like his story-telling, so Martin was even more delighted when, having asked for a copy of his 2nd book, Roadrage, Mum gave us her feedback on our next visit:

"Oh darling, I must tell you, that book's a cracker! Very well-written, I loved it!"

Mum still wants to be reading interesting, informative books, although she still entertains the odd bit of romantic fiction for light relief. Last time we visited she complained she'd run out of good reading material, so I nipped out to the local Pepenbury charity shop this morning and bought her six lovely fat ones!

I asked the nice young man serving me if he read much?

"Oh yes!"

"What do you like to read?"

"Oh, existential literature, you know - Albert Camus, Franz Kafka, that kind of thing. Melancholy stuff."

"Don't worry", I said, "that'll probably wear off after you're 40!"


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    Lifelong bookworm, love writing too. Have been a theatrical agent and reflexologist among other things, attitude to life summed up by Walt Whitman's MIRACLES.

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