BED DOWN IN STYLE
Stay in the head gardener’s house and have this stately home to yourself
Ablack and white photo on display in the walled kitchen garden at audley End shows the staff circa 1900, in shirt sleeves, waistcoats and flat caps. Seated between lawn rollers at the centre of the photo, with a smart bowler hat and watch chain, is head gardener James Vert. and now you can step into his stout black boots and stay in the Head Gardener’s House.
This handsome Victorian property in the grounds of the palatial Jacobean mansion on the Essex- cambridgeshire border has been extensively renovated thanks to airbnb’s £1.25 million donation to English Heritage.
I’m not sure Mr Vert would recognise the upmarket floral wallpapers, the plush wall-towall carpets and the tastefully selected furniture and fittings — but judging by the generous size of the three-bedroom, two-bathroom house, the head gardener was an important chap.
There is ample room for us as a family of five, plus baxter, the cockapoo. We arrive in the dark and it takes us a while to locate the entry keypad, while a group of late-night visitors enjoying a ghost walk wonder if we are part of the entertainment.
Next morning, we open the curtains to find ourselves looking out on to a huge walled kitchen garden fit for Peter rabbit on steroids. We hurry out before the gates open to the public, and for a blissful hour we have the place to ourselves.
We wander past heirloom espaliered apple and pear trees, through beds of beetroot, asparagus, strawberries and rhubarb. an antique potting shed is still in use today, and you can visit a bothy where two under-gardeners lived with the benefit of an early central-heating system.
The current head gardener, louise Ellis, shows us round. Just beyond the kitchen garden is an ornamental one, with a Victorian faux rockery and a square pond, which she tells us was once home to otters. The creatures can be viewed to this day, as part of the extensive taxidermy collection in the big house.
During the 18th century, Sir John Griffin Griffin, later lord Howard de Walden, commissioned capability brown to sculpt the formal gardens. If you stand in front of the main house, you have an undisturbed vista of the river, which brown THErE’S remodelled into a lake
also a parterre, with perennials and annual beds, which are replanted every year. Ellis and her team put in 50,000 spring bulbs across the estate.
In 1139, Geoffrey de Mandeville built a benedictine priory beside the river cam and the london to cambridge road. It became an abbey, and when Henry VIII dissolved it, he gave the land to his lord chancellor Sir Thomas audley. by the reign of James I it was one of the finest houses in the land, and in 1667 charles II bought it as a convenient base to visit the Newmarket races.
When he grew bored of it, audley End was returned to the Earls of Suffolk. During World War II, the house was used as the headquarters of the Polish section of the Special Operations Executive, and in 1948 it was bought for the nation. Today, you can visit the fine state rooms and an enviable library. English Heritage has also restored the Victorian nursery, where visitors can experience the smells of the era: linseed oil for cricket bats, and carbolic soap for scrubbing behind ears. Next door to the Head Gardener’s House is the stable yard, which is still home to four working horses. They put on regular displays, and on select weekends there are Victorian re-enactments. after touring the house and grounds we follow the course of the river cam to cambridge for punting and a hearty pub meal at The Punter. Other good pubs for food within a 15-minute drive of audley End include The cricketers at clavering, which used to be owned by Jamie Oliver’s parents, and The Three Hills in bartlow. as for Mr Vert, he remained as head gardener from 1880 until 1912, when he bought a nursery business in the nearby market town of Saffron Walden.
In the evening, when we have the place to ourselves again, I can imagine his ghost making a final tour of the garden before heading indoors to a comfortable bed.
TRAVEL FACTS
THE Head Gardener’s House is available to rent at airbnb.co.uk. For more information, see english-heritage.org.uk