Tag Archives: ‘Capability’ Brown

Audley End near Saffron Walden in Essex

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I was looking through some photos recently and I realised that I had never got around to doing a blogpost about Audley End. We went there on our way back from our trip to Holland last May. We had actually driven past the place the year before but as it was after 4 pm we weren’t able to go into it.

Audley End

Audley End

Audley End

It’s a very large 17th century Jacobean house not far from Saffron Walden in Essex. It’s apparently a third of its original size which is quite amazing, over the years the rest of it has been demolished, but it still seems a complete house now. The parkland was designed by Capability Brown – as so many of them were.
Audley End

Audley End
The house has had a very checkered career over the years but nowadays Audley End is owned by English Heritage and if you are a member of Historic Scotland you get in free. It’s definitely worth a visit if you are interested in historic houses and gardens and you find yourself in East Anglia.

Below is a photograph of the nursery.

Audley End

A sitting room.
Audley End

A doll’s hosue.
aAudley End 11

Tulip beds.
Audley End

The photo below is of a wee bridge and much smaller house which I think is/was used to house staff.

Audley End

You can see more images of Audley End here.

Blenheim Palace

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Blenheim Palace

On our recent road trip to England we travelled as far down as Blenheim Palace which is in Oxfordshire, in fact I didn’t realise how close we were to London until I saw a huge monument which was acting as a mile marker, we were only 85 miles from London, if we hadn’t been booked in various hotels further north I would have suggested going on to London. Anyway, unfortunately the only day we could go to Blenheim again was a bit damp which was very annoying as we didn’t want to go around the palace again, it was the grounds we were interested in seeing. Below is a part of the Capability Brown designed landscape. I know that some people who are lucky enough to have stately homes see Capability Brown’s designs as being a bit of a curse because it means that they can’t change their own surroundings. I can understand that really.

Blenheim island

We were keen to give the maze a go as we failed completely in the maze at Chatsworth, we couldn’t even get into it never mind out! Blenheim’s maze was much more enjoyable – up to a point, and that point for me was about 10 minutes, because after 11 minutes I just wanted out of there. Could we do it? could we whack!

Blenheim maze

After going up the two viewing platforms – twice, we did eventually find our way out – phew. I can see why some people would begin to panic. From the viewing platform some desperate people were taking photos on their phones to aid their escape – that’s what I call cheating. Have you noticed in the photo above that the yew hedges have been trimmed so that they form the word Blenheim when seen from above – very smart.

Blenheim is expensive to get into but if you live fairly locally you can get an annual ticket for just £1 more which is a great deal I think as it’s a great day out especially for families. There’s a butterfly house and all sorts. I suspect that Jack’s favourite part was the wee train, in fact I’m pretty sure that that was why he wanted to go back there.

Blenheim locomotive

This is NOT him driving it, but he probably wishes he was!

I was about to link to my previous post about our 2014 visit to Blenheim Palace, but I’ve just discovered that it doesn’t exist. I’ve got so behind with posts, but I’ll do it soon, you might find it interesting – you never know. Meanwhile you can read about it here.

Chatsworth House, Derbyshire

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I’ve been wanting to visit Chatsworth House for years but we’d never even been to Derbyshire. After seeing some of the countryside on the BBC’s Countryfile programme recently we decided that we wouldn’t put it off any longer. Of course Debo Devonshire has been on TV recently too with her most recent book and I’m about to start re-reading some of Nancy Mitford’s books. We set off last Wednesday morning and stayed overnight near Sheffield, another place we hadn’t been to.

We drove into Chatsworth early on Thursday morning, and honestly if I had been a weeping kind of a woman I would have wept. Instead of seeing that beautiful house in all its glory the whole front of the house was swathed in plastic which had scaffolding behind it. What a disappointment! Anyway, such is life and I have to say that apart from that Chatsworth is a fantastic day out. You can see some of the plastic in this photo of the back of the house. The Cavendishes have taken advantage of the scaffolding and tours of it are on at the moment. We were tempted but after spending a long time walking about the grounds and the house we were too tired to take on the scaffolding too!

Chatsworth House

The grounds were designed by ‘Capability’ Brown in the 1760s, for some reason I learned quite a bit about him in history when I was at school, it was great to be in one of his creations.
This is a photo of one of the many ponds/water features.

Pond in grounds, Chatsworth House

This is the rockery which is on a really massive scale, the trees are a big feature of the landscape and are beautiful, I must admit that I’m not very far from being a bit of a tree hugger.

Rockery, Chatsworth House

Can you see that there are two darker rectangles of greenery high up on this hill? I’m fairly sure that they are the letters ER which have been seeded in a contrasting green plant there to show the Cavendishes’ allegiance to the Queen but at the moment they don’t look too clear. Maybe they will flower.

Background hills from garden, Chatsworth House

This photo is of a seating area which is above a grotto, it’s quite a climb up there but it’s worth it.

Grotto above pond in grounds of Chatsworth House

I took loads of photos, inside and out, so there are a lot more to come. Obviously the house is a thriving business and a lot of people are being employed there and although I don’t have anything against the National Trust, I still think that a visit to Chatsworth is enhanced by the fact that the family is so involved with the running of it all. They don’t seem to have missed out on many business opportunities along the way although I have to say that as a keen gardener I was disappointed with the garden centre. They could make masses of money selling plants which have been propagated from their plants even if they employed a gardener just for that purpose they would generate far more money than his or her annual wages would cost. When we were there the only plants on offer were a couple of roses, lavender and heuchera (boring old Palace Purple).

I really wanted some plants for my garden as a souvenir of Chatsworth but I didn’t get anything at all. Maybe they normally have a better selection and I was just unlucky.

If you’re planning on visiting Chatsworth you should devote a whole day to it as there’s so much to see. If I were local I would definitely buy a season ticket to the grounds as it’s such a beautiful place to have a picnic or just go for walks. When we were there it was very busy, about half of the visitors seemed to be fellow Scots and the rest of them English, where were all the foreign tourists?

I bought two books in the shop there – a Chatsworth Guide Book and a massive chunkster called Letters Between Six Sisters, the Mitfords obviously, and I think it’ll be very interesting but very awkward to read.

More soon!